Thursday 22 December 2011

House Hunter International - NYC to Singapore

Even more new content with a discussion of last nights House Hunter International covering a move from NYC to Singapore.

I found that the real estate was a side bar in the eposide. It covered to 2 brothers moving to Singapore to establish a new business. The older brother who was paying for everything was moving from NYC. While the younger brother was taking a year off from school in Australia to help out with the project.

So there where looking for a place that could both double as an office/workspace and a home to live in and needed to be downtown. The new business was an attempt to merge a Shopping and a Social Networking website together, which I ended up finding that I was more interested in learning more about than the actual real estate rentals these buyer where looking at.

House Hunters - Tybee Island

House Hunters really kicked it up a notch when they went to Tybee Island in Georgia. The Island community looked like an amazing vacation area, the video of the area had an old style 1800's feel to me.

The home buyers in this show were an older couple looking to buy a vacation home for themselves and their family. Plus wanting the option to rent it out when they were not using it.

They had the standard 3 home options:

1. 549k for a 4 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom, & 3000 foot home.
2. 515k for a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, & 2400 foot home.
3. 525k for a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, & 1700 foot home.

The most interesting thing I saw was something called a ship ladder stair well in home number 3.

However at the end of the day the couple purchased home number 2 since it seemed the best combination of everything they were looking for.

My First Place in Texas

In this edition of My First Place we follow as young girl who is moving from San Fran to Austin Texas for work.

It seems that for this home buyer the number 1 most important thing is that the house has a pool. However, strange as it sounds it seems that pools are not very common in Austin Texas.

Well after 3 homes she ends up buying a new home that she can put a pool in herself.

My First Sale - Alexandra Virginia

Another eposide of My First Sale this one was in Alexandra Virginia. Of course everything I start watching this show now I'm expecting to share the pain of the home owner as they fail to sell there home.

In this case the home owner was selling an apartment condo with 1 bedroom, 1.5 bathrooms, plus it had an extra loft and 1 parking spot.

The home owner had purchased the condominium several years before for 220,000 and still owned 197,000 on it. In addition she had put about 12,000 in upgrades into the unite including some nice hardwood.

What made this sale interesting is that the home seller was looking to take the profits from there home sale and invest it in a new business with her sister. The spin on this was that the new business was in fact a non profit agency.

The home owner initially wanted to list her condo for $350,000 but her REALTOR® got the listing price down to $325,000 and even then that seemed too high for the market in my opinion.

Well after 60 days on the market and only 5 showing they had there first open house followed by a price reduction to $319,900 (The REALTOR® wanted a 10k reduction).

The price reduction seemed to get more buyers into the unit and an offer came in at $300,000 less 8,000 in closing costs. The counter was $319,000 and 5,000 in closing. The buyers countered back at 310,000 less 8k. Personally I think that this was a decent price to jump at. However the home seller declined this offer and decided to wait.

After all of this the wild card comes into play and as we learn that the new non profit business was able to obtain a large money grant from the government. Thus there was no longer any need to sell the condominium so it was pulled off the market!

Professional Grade - Master Bathroom

So the first show of Professional Grade I watch covered a reno in a master bathroom. I'm not certain what city this fix took place in but it doesn't seem to matter when the show isn't about buying or selling a home.

In any event the master bathroom reno involved getting a new vanity, toilet, floor ties, tub upgrade and of course some significant painting.

Well the contractors estimate on this job came in at $5,800 true cost was $4,100. The home owners win $1,700!

Wednesday 21 December 2011

Fear Factor is Back

I know it's not a real estate show and it's a little outside the scope of this blog. But Fear Factor is Back!

This was a great show back in it's day, I know it's been missed. Hopefully it will be successful in it's come back and last a long time.

Professional Grade - New Show

I have discovered a new Real Estate show on HGTV called Professional Grade. If you have never seen the show before it's fairly interesting and is more of a renovation show then a moving show.

I suspect that due do the down turn in the real estate market home reno shows are probably going to be a lot more successful these days. Not to many homing flipping shows around now.

The idea behind Professional Grade is that each show home owners declare a home renovation project to the show's host and a local contractor. We then watch the home owners work on there project, sometimes getting in over their head and needing to hire out parts of the work.

At the end of the show the host and the contractor return and write up a quote of what they would have charged to do the job. The home owners then anounce what there trust cost of the reno was and they win the difference between their cost and the quote. Assuming that the quote was higher than the actual cost, which it always has been so far.

It's been awhile for Real Estate TV

Well it has been sometime since I last blogged about Real Estate TV Video. It's not that I have not thought about posting some new content in awhile it's more that my TV viewing habits changed a bit.

You see I started watching a lot of the Fall prime time season and between Dexter, The Amazing Race and a host of other hot new tv shows my time for watching real estate TV was used up.

However, most of those shows have ended in the last few weeks and I've started back to my old faithful real estate tv shows.

So the bottom line is that I'll have a lot of new content coming up soon!