Type:  Traditional

Age:   Built in 1995

Location:   Near US 31 and State Road 32

Neighborhood:   Willow Creek

Square footage:  4058 including 1428 square feet in the unfinished basement

Rooms:   This four-bedroom home has a large kitchen, two-story entry, family room, formal dining room, separate living room, sunroom, and master suite with vaulted ceilings, private bath and an expansive walk-in closet.

Strengths:  This home has a spacious wood paneled sunroom, large fully fenced backyard, back deck, and a desirable cul-de-sac lot.  The basement could be finished for a reasonable price to add 1400 more square feet of living space.

Challenges:  This home is the largest and arguably one of the nicest in the subdivision. The upstairs carpet color in some rooms is not neutral and may not appeal to the average buyer.

WHAT’S IT WORTH?    $235,000

Cleveland based developer Fairmount Properties backed out of the $100 million Fishers Town Center deal, initiated a year ago, because of the struggling economy. The project included several hundred thousand square feet of office, retail and residential space off of 116^th Street on the west side of I-69.  The developer was unable to acquire about 125 properties needed before it could begin construction.

Town officials will hold a three-hour meeting Dec. 11 at the Fishers Public Library to hear opinions on what residents would like included in plans for the development. Two other meetings will be in January. The town could then change existing plans or consider scrapping the project.

For more information, click here.

Type:  Ranch

Age:   Built in 2002

Location:   Near State Road 32 and Springmill Road

Neighborhood:   Quail Ridge offers residents well maintained common areas, ponds, and a community playground.

Square footage:  1440 square feet

Rooms:   This three bedroom ranch has two full baths, an open floor plan, large great room, dining area, kitchen with quality oak cabinets, and a master suite with a walk-in closet.

Strengths:  This home has a private backyard that backs up to a wooded area.  There is a brand new sprinkler park within walking distance from this home.  This home is in good condition and has great curb appeal.  

Challenges:  According to the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors, the average days on the market for a home in the $100-150K price range in this area is just shy of three months.

WHAT’S IT WORTH?    $130,000

Type:   Traditional

Age:   New Construction

Location:   161^st Street and Carey Road

Neighborhood:   Oak Manor offers a community pool and clubhouse.

Square footage:  5065 including 1720 in the finished basement

Rooms:  This four bedroom home has a main floor office, upstairs bonus room, finished walk-out basement with a full bath and room for a home theater, master suite with sitting room, pond views, and a three-car side-load garage.

Strengths:  This is a builder’s spec home that has never been lived in.  It is an attractive value and could not be rebuilt for the same price.  In my opinion, the property tax cap will help these suburban neighborhoods immensely and may improve the monthly payment by as much as $500. 

Challenges:  There are vacant lots in the neighborhood so a potential buyer will have to deal with future construction traffic.  The supply of area homes in this value range has forced builders to price homes aggressively.  Home resellers need to keep close tabs on the builder market to price their home competitively. 

WHAT’S IT WORTH?    $495,000

Yes, the $700B is the talk of the nation, but recently there was a more important event that will affect real estate throughout the country.  If major lenders and the government would follow their lead, there was a precedent set significant enough that will affect supply of homes on the market and will resultantly stabilize values for property owners. 

The creative solution was in the details of the agreement where Bank of America buys Countrywide.  Bank of America purchased Countrywide at a value where they were willing to allocate over $8 Billion dollars to right the wrong of aggressive and improper mortgage loans.  These aggressive loans helped lead up to 400,000 properties toward foreclosure in a decreasing value market.  This company will identify and modify loan rates to make them affordable with the goal of keeping the home owners in the properties that if left alone would end up as distressed sales in the housing market.  The quantity of homes is so significant that if this model were duplicated by other lending institutions, it would have an impact on home inventory supply throughout the country. 

Again, the goal is to provide an option to the homeowner and to make it affordable enough to stay in the home.  With fewer homes selling at an aggressive discount due to vacancy and quick sale pressure from resultant bank holding cost, supply of distressed homes for sale would be lowered and as a result pricing would stabilize.  Many homeowners who are saddled by unmanageable monthly payments are unable to make that payment and they head towards foreclosure. 

Whether or not you feel that it is only fair that you make your payment and others should be responsible for making theirs, keeping owners in their homes is good for the real estate market.  Like it or not, if there are foreclosures in the neighborhood that offer incredible value compared to standard resale properties, the buyers will focus on where they can get the best price especially in an uncertain financial market. 

Mortgage lenders and the US Government should take note of this precedent and follow the lead of Bank of America.  A stable inventory level of homes with the current demand will stabilize price for people who need to sell.  The result of following this model is a better climate to sell homes where your competition isn’t owned by the bank. 

Type:   French Country  

 Age:  Built in 2002 

Location:  Near the intersection of Keystone and Main Street 

Neighborhood:  A quaint wooded community with 39 custom homes. 

Square footage: 3050 square feet with an additional 1845 square feet in the partially finished basement. 

Rooms:  This four-bedroom home has a main floor master suite with a view of the woods and creek and includes one of three fireplaces.  Two of the upstairs bedrooms share a Jack and Jill bath while the third is used as an office with French doors.  The partially finished basement walks out to the wooded lot.   

Description:  This bank-owned home, currently listed at $359,900, is a great deal for the buyer that is willing to deal with a repossession situation.  This home was modeled after an award winning design from the west coast and is conveniently located just down the street from Carmel High School and the new Arts and Design District with quick access to Keystone.  A wooded lot adjacent to a creek is a rare find, especially with a four-year-old property.  Similar lots without houses in Carmel have sold for over $150,000. 

Remember, with a bank-owned property, the bank will do little or no repairs to the house.  The reduction in price reflects the risk of purchasing the property.  Since there is more risk associated with the home itself, the purchase price for a bank-owned property should be lower than the purchase price of a privately owned home. 

Conventional mortgage money has tightened up recently as a result of the increasing amount of foreclosures. Basically, rates are linked to credit ratings and the bar is set much higher now than in the past.  For example, someone with a 720 credit score, typically considered great buyer, has no issues with interest rates on conventional financing and 5% down-payment.  However, as you move to the mid-600 credit scores (considered reasonable in the past) expect the interest rate to jump up 1.5- 2% higher than the previous norm while the down-payment may be 20%. 

Most lenders are favoring FHA loans (government backed) for these cases where rates are not tied as tightly to credit ratings.

Official: $1.2M spent so far will be recouped in less than a year with property taxes

FISHERS, Ind. — Town officials on Thursday defended the amount they’ve spent in the long fight to annex Geist homeowners, even as both sides braced for a courtroom showdown.

Fishers’ leaders a day earlier revealed records showing they have paid six law firms, two accountants, a city planner and a legislative consultant more than $1,243,070 since January 2007 in their pursuit of 2,200 homes near and on Geist Reservoir. 

“This is a one-time cost to correct a long-term inequity,” said Town Council President Scott Faultless. “It will take less than a year to make this back.”

A majority of the Geist residents oppose annexation and have sued Fishers to prevent it.

Fishers sought help in various areas — planning the annexation, beating back residents’ attempts to create two new towns and successfully battling an anti-annexation bill in the General Assembly, records released by the town show. The costs range from $253,786 to the law firm of Bose McKinney & Evans, to $133,437 to the Indianapolis public relations company of Sease, Gerig & Associates.

Representatives of the homeowners’ group Geist United Opposition declined to comment on Fishers’ costs. But its members have said the town’s spending was reckless in the unfriendly annexation attempt.

The annexation fight has cost the homeowners about $100,000 in legal bills.

Town officials say their legal costs are worth it because the town will gain millions in property taxes from the homeowners for years to come if the annexation succeeds.

“This is about forever,” said Town Council member Stuart Easley.

Fishers projects it will reap $10.2 million in property taxes — after deducting for the cost of added services — in the first five years of annexation.

Town officials said almost all their annexation expenses came after homeowners last summer rejected Fishers’ attempt to annex them voluntarily.

“People should know that barely any of these costs are related to the annexation itself but instead to defending ourselves on all these other fronts,” said Bryan Babb, an attorney for Indianapolis-based Bose McKinney. If the homeowners had agreed to the annexation, the cost would have been about $100,000, he said.

The town offered three-year tax abatements and pledges of free sewer hook ups to the homeowners if they agreed to annexation. Instead, Geist United rejected the offer and went to court last September to incorporate as its own towns, East Geist and West Geist.

During that skirmish, which ended in December, Fishers spent $330,152. Included in the costs were $23,081 to Carmel-based Wabash Scientific, an urban planning firm that did a report on what services Fishers could provide to Geist, and $37,099 to Greenwood-based Reedy & Peters, an accounting firm that determined how those services would be paid for.

After a judge ruled that the homeowners couldn’t incorporate, the homeowners found a sponsor for a legislative bill that would ban involuntary annexations.

The town spent $228,135 fighting the bill, including $42,000 to the Indianapolis law firm Barnes & Thornburg for legislative monitoring and evaluation and $16,679 to Sease, Gerig.

Geist is at least the fourth metro area in recent years to challenge annexation.

Carmel last year successfully annexed 8.3 square miles in southwest Clay Township in a case that went to the Indiana Supreme Court. Carmel is in another fight to annex the community of Home Place, which is just north of Indianapolis.

Thursday, Greenwood sued Bargersville in Johnson County to stop the city from annexing a piece of unincorporated land near Greenwood’s border. Participants in those lawsuits doubted the Geist annexation would have any effect on theirs.

Fishers and the Geist homeowners are scheduled to appear before Hamilton Superior Court Judge Steven Nation on Oct. 1.

Source:  http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080919/LOCAL0102/809190439/1175/LOCAL0102 

Good news arrived recently for home buyers as the US Treasury Department stepped in and agreed to take over control of stumbling Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  According to The Federal Housing Finance Agency, nearly 80% of all residential purchases have a connection to these companies in a secondary market.  In a nutshell, the capability of selling mortgage loans in the secondary market allows banks and lenders to provide buyers access to necessary funds to purchase a property.  Rates for 30 year fixed loans have improved and the outlook is more optimistic for availability of money for home purchases.  Now that you know that money will be available to purchase, does it make sense to buy a home now?

Make no mistake, this is a great time to buy, especially in the 500K+ price range where there is plenty of inventory and current buyer demand has slightly increased compared to the same time period last year.  As you would expect, moving higher in price reduces the quantity of buyers where luxury home inventory levels are out of balance in favor of the buyer, even more so as you approach the million dollar mark and beyond.  Informed buyers should research the incredible values of resale homes or completed new construction homes before meeting with an architect to start from scratch.  What they will find is they may move into a home that has more amenities than what they can build or they will save a substantial amount of money.   

In my opinion, new construction home inventory levels will drop through 2009 in Carmel and Fishers due to the lack of new construction starts for builder speculative homes.  Many homes, especially those up the price scale, require 8 months to 1 year to complete.  We monitor current housing starts and predict that there will be less new construction supply over this time period.  What this means in the future for the buyer is a more balanced position between seller and buyer, thus, the leverage that the buyer has now will be reduced due to a drop in inventory.  Basically, there will be more pricing stability for builders through next year.  Take a good look at what is available on the market and don’t lose your opportunity.  It is a great time to buy.