Author Results for Sushil Cheema

Real Estate News: Home-Mortgage Rates Steady

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Home-Mortgage Rates Steady: Rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.74% for the week ended Jan. 20, up from 4.71% last week.

Highland Hospitality Nears Deal with Creditors: Highland Hospitality, the hotel chain owned by real-estate mogul Joseph E. Robert Jr.’s investment firm, is nearing a deal to hand ownership to creditors led by Ashford Hospitality Trust and Prudential Financial.

Design Decor: Horse Hair, Stingray and Crystals: A Hong Kong design firm got a blank check to decorate a 8,072-square-foot house. The result? A film noir-inspired home adorned with crystals, horse hair and stingray leather.

The Home Front: Contemporary Among the McMansions: An ex-Google couple decide to build a different kind of Silicon Valley luxury home.

Private Properties: Tom Siebel Sells Montana Ranch: Billionaire software entrepreneur Tom Siebel has sold his 62,000-acre Montana cattle ranch. Plus, David Saperstein drops the price  of his equestrian estate by 34%, and Sandy Gallin is in contract to sell his Bridgehampton Estate.

Real Estate News: Home Resales Post Gain

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Home Resales Post Gain: Sales of existing homes rose 12% last month, ending a rocky year for the housing market on an encouraging note. Separately, jobless claims fell in the latest week.

Heard on the Street: Land Securities’ Development Gamble: Land Securities is putting all its chips on a recovery in the U.K. commercial property market, Heard on the Street’s Renée Schultes writes.

Europe House of the Day: French Villa: This Belle Epoque-style estate near Valbonne is ideally located, with the beaches of the Côte d’Azur only 20 minutes away, while the mountains are an hour’s drive.

House of the Day: Choteau Mountain Ranch: This 8,450-acre ranch in Montana includes a modern house that the current owners built around 2002. It features views of Choteau Mountain and Ear Mountain, as well as a stretch of the Teton River.

Real Estate News: Home Construction Declines

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Home Construction Declines: Housing starts fell 4.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 529,000 in December, but building permits, a gauge of future construction, surged 16.7%.

Motto Comes Back to Haunt: IMH Financial had a philosophy of ‘Don’t Lose the Money.’ But its strategy was no match for the real-estate downturn.

As Values Rise: iStar Looks to Dig Out: The company’s success at selling assets at higher-than-expected prices has helped it reduce its debt level. A big test comes in June, when $2.2 billion is due.

Home Builders Still Pessimistic: The National Association of Home Builders’ index remained flat at 16 in January, remaining low levels despite increasing signs of improvement elsewhere in the economy.

J.P. Morgan Admits Wrongful Military Foreclosures: J.P. Morgan Chase admitted that it wrongly foreclosed on 14 active-service military families and overcharged thousands more on their mortgages, a continuing internal bank review has found.

Mortgage Servicers Face New Fee System: Federal housing regulators said they will develop a new payment system for mortgage-servicing companies, which have been battered by paperwork errors and widespread consumer complaints.

Real Estate News: Pent-Up Demand for New York City Office Space

Here is a look at real-estate news from the weekend’s and Tuesday’s WSJ:

Fed Felt Hamstrung by Housing Bubble: Federal Reserve officials acknowledged a housing-market bubble more than a year before U.S. house prices peaked, but they showed little inclination to address it.

Pent-Up Demand for New York City Office Space: During the fourth quarter in New York City, the absorption rate spurted by 2 million square feet, according to Cushman & Wakefield. That was the most positive absorption since the first quarter of 2007.

Anatomy Lesson: Peter Dunham’s L.A. Living Room: How Los Angeles interior designer Peter Dunham does serene that’s anything but sleepy with his easy, casual style.

Take Two for Brooklyn’s Film and Movie Studio: Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios, where movies including Spiderman and Sex and the City were shot, has completed a $90.5 million financing package that will allow it to add 11 sound stages to its existing five.

RLJ Buys Doubletree: A company controlled by Robert L. Johnson, the founder of the Black Entertainment Television network, has cut a $335 million deal for a Midtown hotel known for its striking architecture.

Real Estate News: Mortgage Rates Hit Four-Week Low

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Mortgage Rates Hit Four-Week Low: The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 4.71% in the week ended Jan. 13, reaching a four-week low.

Serviced Apartment Ownership: The Next Investment Trend in Hong Kong? In a move aimed at gaining cash, serviced apartment operator Ovolo Group is selling 48 units in a Sheung Wan building — and guaranteeing buyers a return.

The Home Front: A Living Room Ready for Liftoff: Boston architect Warren Schwartz designed and built a modern home that slopes down a hill in the Berkshires before dramatically cantilevering for 45 feet. The great room floats 14 feet above the ground.

Real Estate News: Home Sales Gains Seen

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Home Sales Gains Seen: Housing economists expect the troubled residential market to begin picking up in 2011, with low mortgage rates and bargain home prices boosting sales in the spring selling season.

Banking Law Hung Up on Down Payments: Banks are sparring over looming U.S. mortgage-lending rules that could hike costs for millions of borrowers as regulators race to meet an April deadline for issuing the regulations.

Heard on the Street: Banks’ Housing Giveaway: Buy a foreclosed home, get a TV? It is no joke. Banks’ holdings of distressed properties remain a burden, even with foreclosure activity slowing since the fall.

Zipping Bad Vibes in Foreclosed Homes: The foreclosure crisis has resurrected an ancient tradition: the ritual house cleansing. Buyers are consulting witches, psychics and priests to bless homes that suffer from “bad energy” associated with money problems.

Singapore Tries Again to Cool Property Market: The Singapore government unveiled more measures to stabilize prices in the city-state’s housing market, which it says could rise beyond “sustainable levels.”

Real Estate News: ‘Green’ Houses Get Push From Martha Stewart

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Centro’s Fate Lies With New Suitors: Most of the banks set to decide the fate of shopping-center owner Centro Properties Group by December have been replaced by hedge funds and other opportunistic investors.

Colony Gets Boutique-Hotel Partner: Colony Capital has purchased a minority stake in Sam Nazarian’s company, betting that the 35-year-old Los Angeles night-club and hotel impresario will be the boutique-hotel industry’s next big name.

‘Green’ Houses Get Push From Martha Stewart: Domestic doyenne Martha Stewart and home builder KB Home are teaming up again, this time to offer environmentally friendly homes, a move both companies hope will spark home sales.

Pitching Home Projects to Financiers: As home builders and suppliers gather this week for their annual meeting, one question weighs on many conventioneers’ minds: Who is going to pay for construction of the next generation of new American homes?

Real Estate News: Stores Planned Near Brooklyn Marsh

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Stores Planned Near Brooklyn Marsh: A plan to transform a 15-acre swath of land near Four Sparrow Marsh in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, into a car dealership and retail center has drawn criticism from local conservation groups.

Glassy Penthouse for $18.95 Million: Now that most of the units of One Jackson Square have been sold, the developers have focused on marketing the penthouse.

A World Where Less Made More: ‘Rietveld’s Universe,’ at the Centraal Museum Utrecht, shows the designer’s development from furniture maker to town planner and architect of more than 100 buildings—in a setting that shows his work put into practice.

Real Estate News: Market for Vacation Homes Rises

Here is a look at real-estate news in the weekend’s and today’s WSJ:

Market for Vacation Homes Rises: Sales in many vacation communities across the U.S. soared last year to levels not seen since boom times, driven by deep discounts, cash purchases and buyers’ rising stock portfolios.

Getting More Help With Your Down Payment: Down payment assistance is back. A look at 7 generous programs.

Remaking the Reverse Mortgage: A new type of reverse mortgage is attracting the attention of affluent borrowers eager to extract cash from their homes. But they need to be aware of the tradeoffs.

Fannie Tests Foreclosure-Prevention Plan in Florida: The highest court in Massachusetts ruled against Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp in two foreclosure cases that cast doubt over whether some home loans were properly handled when packaged into securitizations.

U.S. Mortgage Rules Delayed in Regulator Spat: The crafting of new standards for mortgage lending has been delayed as top U.S. regulators clash on whether to attach protections for homeowners on the verge of foreclosure.

Real Estate News: Mortgage Rates Tick Lower

Here is a look at real-estate news in today’s WSJ:

Mortgage Rates Tick Lower: Home-mortgage rates eased in the latest week, falling slightly after several weeks of mostly sharp increases, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of mortgage rates.

The $60 Million Dream House: Sand imported from the Bahamas. An indoor Olympic-sized pool. Now all these developers betting the house on a multimillion-dollar spec home need is a buyer.

Green, Green Luxury of Home: The idea of building an eco-friendly luxury home may seem like an oxymoron, but developers across Europe are hoping to turn the seemingly contradictory phrase into a 21st-century success story.

Relative Values: Lofts Under $1 Million: Condominiums and apartments in Arlington, Va., New York City and Seaside, Calif.

The Home Front: Picasso and a Yoga Room: Carolyn and Bill Powers’s Aspen home marries top-shelf art with hotel-like amenities.

Private Properties: Imus Cuts Price on Compound: Radio host Don Imus and his wife, Deirdre, have trimmed the price on their waterfront compound in Westport, Conn. Plus, a former AOL executive buys a historic estate in Potomac, Md., and the widow of Madoff-scandal figure Jeffry Picower, has sold their Fairfield, Conn. estate.