• A house with only one bathroom. Even a house with one full bath and a toilet/sink powder room is going to turn buyers off.

• A house without air conditioning.

• Electrical systems protected by a fuse box instead of a circuit breaker.

• Spiral staircases. They’re relatively rare, and for good reason — they are unsafe.

• Basements with only an outside entrance. Homeowners expect convenient access to that valuable space.

• Ceilings that look like they’ve been stuccoed, dropped ceilings with fluorescent lights, and dark beams cutting across the ceiling.

• The split-level floor plan. Want to go from kitchen to family room? Go down half a flight of stairs. From living room to bedroom? Up half a flight. Most folks would rather not.

Source: The Washington Post, Elizabeth Razzi (12/02/07)

How does the Supersizing of McMansions Change Cities?
An increasing number of cities are getting bigger homes within their boundaries — a development that some view as a mixed blessing.

About two-thirds of the U.S.’s largest cities report having “McMansions” – new, much larger houses built on lots that once contained smaller homes, a new study finds. What’s more, about one in five of the largest cities report 30 or more McMansions within their boundaries.

“The phenomena of McMansions may represent a sea change in which residents with money are moving back into cities and older suburbs, rather than building new homes far from the central city,” says Jack Nasar, co-author of a study on McMansions in U.S. cities and professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State University.

While a large home may change the character of a neighborhood, it also can increase all home values in the area. “You may not like it if someone builds a McMansion next door, but if you live a few houses away, you may think it is a pretty good deal if property values increase,” Nasar says.

Cities Naser studied reported a variety of regulations. The most common — adopted by about 14 percent of all surveyed cities — was to limit building height as a way to control oversized houses, Nasar says. The next most common regulations were to create design review boards to approve plans for new homes (about 8 percent of cities) and to set limits on floor-area ratios (about 7 percent of cities).

The best plan, Nasar says, may be for cities to be proactive and identify likely areas for McMansions, then work with builders to compromise on regulations, while encouraging development of large homes.

Source: Ohio State University, Jeff Grabmeier (11/30/07)
Credit Score Primer: What Buyers Need to Know to Get a Loan
In the wake of the credit crisis, lenders have become much pickier about whom they lend to. Here are some basic facts that will help potential borrowers understand what they face.

The measurement that most lenders use to assess applicants’ credit risk is the FICO score developed by Fair Isaac Corp. The score ranges from 300 to 850.

There’s not one FICO score. Buyers have three: one for each of the three credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.

Each credit score is based on information the credit bureau keeps on file. Since credit bureaus don’t share their data with one another, the three FICO scores may differ, sometimes by as much as 100 points.

The components of a FICO score are:

• Payment history: 35 percent
• Amounts owed: 30 percent
• Length of credit history: 15 percent
• New credit: 10 percent
• Types of credit used: 10 percent

A consumer with a 580 credit score might qualify under FHA requirements, but, generally, in order to qualify for a prime loan, a borrower must have a credit score above 620 for a conventional loan at all and above 720 for a loan at terms and rates most borrowers would consider desirable.

Source: The Dallas Morning News, Pamela Yip (12/03/07)
Free Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Web Site
Real estate practitioners do not have to spend a ton of money to increase Web site traffic. They can take advantage of local search optimization with Google Local, and they can make their business listing stand out by offering a comparative market analysis, neighborhood report, or buying guide to site visitors at no cost.

Business listings also can be posted on Yelp and InfoSpace, and site content can be posted on the social bookmarking site Real Estate Voices.

By posting property photos on Flickr, practitioners can take advantage of the site’s online community platform, which allows users to comment on photos and link back to their Web sites.

Practitioners should consider posting their video virtual tours on Google Video and their property listings on Google Housing Search.

Those who write articles can gain publicity for themselves and their Web sites by publishing through EzineArticles.com, and practitioners whose sites feature free market statistics, articles, and resource guides can be featured on the Librarian’s Internet Index.

Localism, a social community site that posts real estate information for consumers, also might bolster site traffic, provided practitioners are members of ActiveRain.

Source: Realty Times, Michael J. Russer (11/30/07)
Top 10 Most Walkable Cities
A Brookings Institution researcher says after the advent of the shopping mall, developers forgot how to build great cities, but that’s changing as urban areas again strive to be walkable.

“For 50 years we had this collective amnesia about how to build great places,” says Christopher B. Leinberger, a real estate developer and visiting fellow at Brookings.

Leinberger quantified the walkability trend by ranking the 30 largest metropolitan areas in terms of the number of walkable urban places they had clustered about them, then divided the number of places by the total population to find the cities with the most walking opportunities per capita.

Leinberger, who also teaches urban planning at the University of Michigan, counted 157 such “walkable places” — including Boston’s Beacon Hill, Miami’s Coconut Grove and the Houston area’s Sugar Land Town Square. The Tampa, Fla., area was the only one without a single place on his list.

Here are the top 10 cities with the most walkable places per capita, along with the number of most walkable areas:

• Washington-Arlington-Alexandria: 20 walkable places
• Boston-Cambridge-Quincy: 11
• San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose: 14
• Denver: 5
• Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton: 4
• Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue: 6
• Chicago-Naperville-Joliet: 14
• Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Palm Beach: 4
• Pittsburgh: 3
• New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island-Stanford, Conn.: 21

Source: The Associated Press, Sarah Karush (12/04/07)