Tuesday 31 January 2012

London to the South of Spain

Well this House Hunters International show was fairly unique. It followed the same formula with a home buyer moving from London to the south of Spain. What made this interesting however was that the buyer had a price point in the mid $550k range and that they were looking for something in the country that was very isolated.

Isolated means that you end up owning lots of land all around you! This was not about buying a small unit in a city.

The views of 3 of the homes we saw where amazing! In the end the home buyer purchased a house in the middle of know where but in a classic spain lay out. Lots of room to expand if they needed!

House Hunter St Louis

I've been to St Louis a long long time ago so it was very nice to see a city that I've been to on House Hunters. Always makes it interesting as you try to see if you recognize any of the locations and their seemed to be a few of them.

In this show of HH we had a couple looking to buy a home with older charm that had been updated. The price point was in the 200k to 300k range and their seemed to be a lot of options availalble at this very reasonable price point.

In the end the buyers picked the one home that seemed to meet all of their requirements but didn't seem to have the street appeal that the other ones had to me.

Monday 30 January 2012

Generic Real Estate Video

While looking for a real estate video for LA, I came across this one that I wanted to show on my blog to my readers:


It is a very generic real estate video for a REALTOR or real estate agent. The prop of the for sale / sold sign doesn't highligh any brokerage. But it's being promoted by some Youtube account with an agents name attached to it as a way to get business.

I'm not certain how successful it will be.

Los Angeles Real Estate

It's been awhile but here is another real estate video. Picked based upon the Selling LA Tv show. So here is my attempt to find a current active real estate listing from Los Angeles:


As you can see I wasn't all that successful. What I ended up doing was targeting the Malibu area of LA to see what I could find and this is one of the newest videos I was able to locate from Sept 2011.

In this video we have a REALTOR discussing the Malibu real estate market and several active MLS listing for sale. All with the ocean and it's noise in the background!

Enjoy!

Friday 27 January 2012

Cali to South Korea

This was the first house hunters internation show that I've seen that takes place in South Korea. Normally when people are moving it tends to be to a much warmer climate.

In this show we follow to Americans who are moving to South Korea to teach english as many have done before. And as is common as foreigners they cannot buy a home but must rent.

The intersting twist was that in South Korea they required a Key Money deposit of between $15k and $50k! Key money seems to be a lot like a security deposit on the rental unit but it certainly would be a significant barrier to moving out on your own for the first time.

In the end this couple of ending up moving into the cheapest and smallest place available. They tended to come up with reasons why they didn't like the more expensive homes but my gut told me that it really was the money issue.

House Hunters Denver

Denver House Hunter was on this week.

Home buyer were looking in the $600k to $700k range. You can get some very nice homes for that price point in the Denver real estate market it seems.

A wide varity of house where offered to the buyers ranging from an older 70's style with lots of work required to a large fully updated palace.

In the end these home buyers wanted to do the work to tailor the house to their needs so they purchased the older 70's home.

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Selling NY back for a 2nd Season

With the launch of Selling LA, I had expect that we had seen the end of Selling New York. I had expect that the series would go the way of the "Real House Wives" series and just keep moving from city to city.

But that doesn't seem to be the case at all, as I just saw an add for Selling New York Season 2. Looks like it is going to start next week.

I hope that they have adjusted the format and improved the show for the 2nd season.

Selling LA

A new real estate TV show started last week called Selling LA. I appears to be a spin off of Selling New York, except that it's in LA. Common to both shows is that it focuses on buying high end homes for the rich.

As I said before I wasn't a big fan of Selling New York since all of the real estate appeared to be very simliar apartment. With the LA spin off the homes are a lot more varied.

Hopefully we will be getting a lot of seasons of Selling LA!

London to Rio Brazil

House Hunters Internation last night! This show was about a man moving from London to Rio Brazil to live with his Brazlian girlfriend.

The home buyer had about $400k to spend and was looking for an older house that was in need of some serious repair that he could fix up over the next year.

Well, only the first house we saw met those fix up conditions, the other 2 where newer and in better shape. So there was no much drama in which home he would be purchasing.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

House Hunters International - Thailand to Australia

In this show we watch what appeared to be Australian ex-pats living in Thailand moving back to Australia for a work opportunity.

The twist her was that we had a spoiled wife living the life of luxury in Thailand with a nanny to look after her 3 boys and a cook. Thus she spend her days on the beach, something that wasn't going to continue back in Australia.

The buyers where looking in the golden coast area and the prices were all near 1 million with pools.

In the end the picked the home closest to work for the husband.

Income Property - Already Rented

A good show of Income Property was on this week. This one was slightly different as the landlords had already rented out the basement at $850 / month and where just trying to get the unit in move in condition.

The first option was to get the unit up to meet rental code.

The second option was to get the unit to code, plus do the bathroom, kitchen counter top and put in new appliances.

The home owners picked the 2nd option at a cost of $8,500 which was a good choice for them since they found a lot of rot and mold behind the shower when they opened it up.

Thus by spending the money now on the show, they avoided a costly shower fix in a few months!

House Hunters New Orleans

I saw the end of a house hunters show last night which was about a couple moving from New York City back to New Orleans.

I wanted to comment that a lot of  New Orleans real estate must be doing better now. I was expecting that home prices in that market would still be in the dumps but we were looking at homes in the 500k range that had only 3 bedrooms!

Looking forward to getting a chance to watch the entire show.

Thursday 5 January 2012

House Hunters in Chicago

Another new show of house hunters was on HGTV this week. In this issue we have a couple looking to purchase a new home in Chicago nearly Wriggley stadium.

They ended up having 3 choices:

#1 Was an old converted Couch House with no outside land and no parking it was 440k and only 1500 feet.

#2 Was a 3 unit home which included 2 units for renting. Thus making the 575k price tag affordable. It also include 2000 feet of living space in the owners unit.

#3 Also had a single rental unit on the first floor, with a nice 4 bedroom 2 bathroom owners unit on the 2nd and 3rd floors. It had 1700 feet for the owners and some updates. However the 3rd floor was a converted attic with some small bedrooms in my opinion. However the price tag was 577k.

In the end the home buyers picked opinion #3.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

House Hunters - Jupiter Florida

I saw one of my first new editions of House Hunter in a very long time over the holidays and I'm finally able to comment on it.

This house hunters took place in Jupiter Florida and covered a single woman looking to buy a home. The most notable thing about this show was that it seem very pro house owners association (HOA).

The buyer wasn't wanting to do much upkeep with the outside of the house and was thus the REALTOR was really pushing the advantages of an HOA. I've never seen this before and figured that it was worth a comment.

Happy New Year to My Readers

I just wanted to wish all of my readers a Happy 2012 New Year!

I hope that you've had a great holiday season and that 2012 brings you lots of success. I'm certain that we will have lots of real estate TV and video to discuss going forward!