From the monthly archives:

August 2007

Austin a Home Flipper’s Market?

August 30, 2007

This news snippet below is the sort of thing that paints an unrealistic picture for investors who don’t take the time to properly study and analyze what they are getting ready to do.
Let’s take a closer look at what the article says…
Daily Real Estate News | August 30, 2007
Markets Where a Flipper Can [...]

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Things every Austin real estate buyer should know

August 29, 2007

We’ve recently started providing an additional form to all of our buyers. It’s a notice provided by the Texas Association of Realtors called “GENERAL INFORMATION AND NOTICE TO A BUYER“. Though I like to keep paperwork simple and minimal, this form is helpful in bringing to the attention of buyers some of the things that [...]

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Downtown & UT Tower View From Rooftop!!

August 28, 2007

This gave me a chuckle this morning. Comments that agents write in listings are often a source of amusement, but I’ve never seen one boasting of the view from the roof. There is not a rooftop deck or anything, just a normal house with a roof. But if you want to get out your ladder [...]

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Stevie Ray Vaughan died 17 years ago today

August 27, 2007

Stevie Ray Vaughan died 17 years ago today. I miss seeing him play in Austin back in the 1980’s. Austin properly honored him and his music with a prominent statue on the shore of Lake Ladybird (formerly Town Lake) on the hike and bike trail downtown.
If you ever saw him play live, especially in a [...]

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Deciding against tankless water heaters for our new home

August 27, 2007

Sylvia and I are in the process of building a new custom home in SW Austin. This will be our second custom (and new) home. All other homes we’ve owned have been resales. On the first one we built in 2003, we went $50K+ over budget by adding too many upgrades and making too many [...]

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Austin Rental Market – July 2007 stats update

August 26, 2007

The Austin rental market continues to see rising rents. The mortgage problems in the sub-prime mortgage loan market are helping rental markets in all parts of the U.S., as renters who should not be qualified to purchase a home are indeed remaining renters, as they should. Austin has the added benefit of a strong job [...]

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Another Boneheaded new law from our Texas Legislature

August 24, 2007

I wrote a while back about a new law imposing a mandatory two day grace period for landlords in Texas, which will cause tenants to pay more in late fees that they currently do – exactly the opposite of what the author of the bill intended. Now we have a new law that is equally [...]

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Austin Condos – First signs of pullback from developers

August 24, 2007

In today’s Austin Business Journal there is news about the first sign of something we knew would eventually happen. The question has been asked “are there enough condo buyers to buy all of these Austin condos scheduled to be built?” The answer I’ve heard from various sources (economists, builders, Realtors who specialize in condos) is [...]

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Real Estate ‘Pretenders’ dropping like flies

August 23, 2007

I learned a new term this week at the Keller Williams camp in Austin. Agents from declining markets that have turned into Buyer Markets referred to the real estate “pretenders”, who are now dropping like flies in the tough markets. This year will be the first year in a decade that membership in the National [...]

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Is Downtown Austin Living going to be too loud?

August 23, 2007

I came across this news snippet today, regarding noisy downtown living. I’ve wondered about this as Austin grows and builds all of our downtown condos. This article says that downtown residents in St. Petersburg FL, which “has turned into a trendy boomtown full of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and new residents”, are fed up with [...]

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