Final Post on This Blog

I have moved this blog to http://sworlandoscoop.com so I can provide the readers here with more dynamic content. Thank you for visiting and I promise you’ll love the new blog even more.

13 Ways to Make Your Home Look Like a Model

HGTV has a great article pertaining to the the steps necessary to stage your home to look like a million bucks. The article contains the following 13 steps that will give your home that “have to have” look.

1. Make an Entrance. The outside of the home is the first thing people see and it says a lot about what the inside looks like. Most home buyers make up their mind about whether they like a home or not within the first 15 seconds so its critical to spruce up the front of the home. Some bold & cheerful paint for the front door, a new seagrass door mat, and new hardware are just some of the simple and inexpensive things that can be done to spruce things up outisde.
2. Conquer the Clutter. Most people have too much stuff and it can sound like a daunting task, but uncluttered rooms will appear more spacious and inviting.
3. Make Less is More Your Mantra. People not only tend to have too many little things, but they also tend to have too much furniture. There should be no more than 2 furniture pieces per wall and if you don’t use it then lose it.
4. Float Furniture. Professional stagers say too many people have couches butted up against a wall. Try floating your couches awayfrom the walls and envision a figure 8 or the letter H in the middle of the room with clear pathways around it. Many times this technique will make the room seem larger and more inviting.
5. Mix it up. Just because you bought a chair for a particular room doesn’t mean it won’t look great somewhere else. Try moving things around. You can give your house a whole new look just by moving things around.
6. Rediscover Lost Spaces. A lot of what stagers do is creating fantasy spaces. A room for a mediation, an exercise space, a family game room, or a reading room can dramatically increase the value of your home to a buyer. So move your boxes in that room you use for storage and transform it into a room with purpose.
7. Let the Sun Shine In. A bright room that doesn’t seem closed in will look larger. Get rid of the old heavy drapery and put in something light. Just some simple sheers on a tension rods can do the trick. Bamboo or parchment shades with curtain panels made of light cotton twill or or translucent linen also work very well. I love the sheers because the light coming in will be soft and diffused and not harsh like the the lighting you get from direct sunlight coming through a window.
8. Light the Way. Staged homes look great because of the lighting design. Many homes are improperly lit with too few fixtures or just too harsh. To remedy this problem just increase the wattage on lamps and fixtures. The rule of thumb here is 100 watts per 50 square feet. Then install dimmers to control the lighting. Another trick with lighting is layering. A combination of a light from overhead, floor and table lighting, and accent lights create a great ambiance and the layers add interest to the room.
9. Make a Splash with Color. Painting is the cheapest and easiest way to change the look of a room. You can also accomplish this with colored accessories. Find an art piece in a room you really like to draw inspiration for the colors in that room.
10. Paint it Black. Painting old and tired furniture white has been a trick used for years but try painting it black. It instantly updates the look and enhances the other colors in the room. The key here is moderation. Use black on lampshades, accent tables, and picture frames and don’t use a huge black leather couch from the 80’s.
11. Make Your Art Sing. Art hung creatively makes them stand out and shows off the space so don’t just go hanging them high in a straight line.
12. Accessorize with Flair. Accessories with finish off the room. The magic number here is three, but one and five also work well. Don’t place them in a straight line but rather place them in a triangle. Make sure the three accessories vary in size, width, and height. The largest one goes in the back and the smallest goes up front. Another tip is that the eye naturally reads from left to right so placing a striking object in the far right corner of a room will draw attention.
13. Bring the Outdoors In. Stages homes are almost always filled with pricey flower arrangements but you can get the same effect by clipping branches and twigs from your yard and placing them in a tall vase. Its a great way to add a structural piece and add something seasonal to the home.

Orlando Condo Sales Decline Much Worse Than Homes

According to the most recent Orlando MSA statistics, the condo market is much worse here than the market for single family homes. The sale of condos dropped 63% in the past twelve months while the sale of single family homes have dropped only 43%. Don’t get me wrong they’re both bad but you can’t say condos aren’t worse off. The condo market in Orlando is also worse than the rest of the state of Florida. Condo sales have only declined 27% in the same period for the state as a whole. Perhaps the reason for this disparity is that Orlando drew in a lot more investors during the boom years between 2003-2006.

I can definitely attest to the fact that many of the condos for sale these days are vacant and investor owned.

Icon Celebration Resort Condo

Icon Celebration is a new Art Deco style resort condominium development in Celebration by The Related Group, architect Morris Adjmi, and interior design by Hirsch Bedner Associates. Some renowned projects completed by Hirsch Bender Associates include The Mandarin Oriental in Miami and the Astir Palace Westin in Greece. One & two bedroom residences will be available with on site daily hotel management. It certainly sounds like a good addition to Celebration but no pricing is available at this time but I’m sure will be available soon on the Icon Celebration homepage.

Countrywide Plans to Layoff 20% of Workforce

After getting a $11.5 billion line of credit from Bank of America, Countrywide announced it will layoff 12,000 employees which is 20% of their workforce. They then announced it will be giving Bank of America a minority stake in the company for another $2 billion dollar cash infusion. Up until this time, Countrywide had been saying they would be expanding their workforce to gain market share from other lenders facing the sub prime crisis so this layoff announcement is a turn of events. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo also predicts this sub prime crisis to send the country into a recession. Let’s just hope Mr. Mozilo is wrong but he does see a lot stuff we common folk don’t see.

August Real Estate Market Numbers Orlando

The latest real estate market numbers released today by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association reveal a rising inventory and mortgage rates alongside declining values and number of sales in Central Florida. The inventory as of the end of August stands at 26,313 homes on the market and average mortgage rates have jumped 40 basis points in the past 12 months to 6.6% vs. 6.2% 12 months ago. The median price has dropped from $250,000 12 months ago to $245,000 at the end of August. The more alarming number is that the number of sales sales have dropped more than 40% than a year ago. August 2006 recorded 2,249 sales while August 2007 sales were a mere 1,343. The inventory based on sales in the Orlando market is 19 months of supply. Jeepers Batman, that’s a lot of homes on the market. You can click on the thumbnails below to view a graphical picture of these stats.

Hovnanian Reports $80.5 Million Dollar Loss

The large national home building company Hovnanian reported a $80.5 million dollar loss for the third quarter of 2007. The president of the company, Ara K. Hovnanian, stated he expects the challenges in the housing market to persist throughout 2008. He attributes this decline to the tightening to the credit market reducing the number of qualified buyers, high inventory levels in many of the markets, and the psychology of the buyer being impacted by all the news & media coverage about the rate of foreclosures and mortgage availability. He also goes on to comment that the credit tightening of lenders has impacted the jumbo loan market since the beginning of the third quarter 2007.

IKEA Announces Open Date for Mall at Millenia Location

Ikea has finally announced the grand opening date of their new Orlando store near Millenia Mall in Southwest Orlando as November 14, 2007 at 9:00 am.

The Mortgage Life Cycle and Its Changes Today

The life of a mortgage loan is not as simple as it once was. Up until about a decade ago, lenders made loans to homebuyers and held onto the loan until they were paid off, but things have changed. Now, soon after homeowners close on their properties, their mortgage loans are bought, sold and resold over and over as part of an elaborate financial web that affects many, many areas of our economy. Here is a glimpse at the typical mortgage loan “life cycle”:

Step 1: A lender originates a loan, enabling a homebuyer to obtain the financing they need to purchase a property.

Step 2: After closing, the lender attempts to sell the loan on the secondary market in order to generate the funds needed to be able to offer new loans to other customers. Loans are commonly bundled into packages called Mortgage Backed Securities (securities that yield payments of principal and/or interest from the underlying mortgage loans).

Step 3: A rating agency rates the securities according to how risky they are; e.g., how likely it is that they will hold their value or increase in value.

Step 4: Dealers and investors buy and sell these securities.

Step 5: The value of these investments is dependent upon homeowners who complete the cycle by making their scheduled monthly mortgage payments. Each step in the cycle is highly dependent on the other steps in order to maintain a consistent flow of mortgage money available for home financing.

What has Changed These Days?
In short, the mortgage life cycle has been disrupted because there has been a break in the chain and there is not enough money to go around. Beginning last year, an alarming number of homeowners were not able to make their payments and the percentage of defaults and foreclosures began rising rapidly, and continues to rise. There are reasons why this happened so suddenly.

Lending Practices Changed
In the late 1990s, overzealous lenders started bending the traditional “rules” by giving loans to customers who really didn’t have the resources to meet the monthly mortgage payments. These loans are known as “subprime” because the customers’ ability to pay did not meet the standards of the reliable (“prime”) loans. Many of these loans were adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) with very low initial monthly payments that increase periodically. The assumption was that either the homebuyers’ income would rise later on, so they could afford the higher payments, or that the value of their home would increase, allowing them to refinance while still maintaining a minimum amount of equity.

Subprime lenders were not the only ones who helped cause today’s situation. Others include:

• Rating agencies. The rating agencies severely underestimated the number of defaults and foreclosures that could happen with subprime loans. In the last few months, these Rating Agencies have downgraded many of the Mortgage Backed Securities all at once, so investors are either forced to sell them at a loss – or worse, not sell at all, which constricts “liquidity” of credit and essentially brings the mortgage life cycle to a halt.
• Wall Street dealers and investors. Dealers “sliced and diced” the cash flows of the underlying mortgages to create mortgage securities which yielded high returns for investors. However, investors began paying less attention to the risks inherent in these securities and the underlying loans, encouraging inexperienced lenders to enter the industry. Many of these lenders were unaware of the dangers of irresponsible lending and some of them have recently gone out of business.

About Celebration

Take the best ideas from the towns of yesterday and the technology of the new millennium, and fuse them into a community that meets the needs of modern families. The developers of Celebration started down a path of research & study that resulted in an innovative new community. Homes are a blend of traditional southeastern exteriors with front porches and interiors that enhance today’s lifestyles. A showcase for some of the world’s leading architects, MARKET STREET at CELEBRATION is a unique collection of charming shops and tempting eateries nestled around a serene lakeside promenade. Always on the menu at MARKET STREET are flavorful styles, distinctive ambiance, and outdoor patio dining. Celebration is made up of numerous smaller villages with its own character and amenities. Each village has its own park, palyground, tennis courts, basketball courts, community pool , etc. At the center of all these amenities is the Celebration Golf Club which features a target oriented course by Robert Trent Jones. There are also jogging and bike trails dispersed throughout the community. Celebration is home to a hospital, fitness center, hotel, and a Stetson University satellite branch which adds to its appeal. Keeping with the modern theme, a local intranet is provided to all residents. This is a compelling choice for a primary or vacation residence. The only gripe about the community is that the CDD fees add a lot to your property taxes and you do get a lot of traffic from wandering Disney tourists. For further info please visit http://www.celebrationfl.com