Jana Kramer Sells Nashville Bacherlorette Pad

SELLER: Jana Kramer
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $367,000
SIZE: 2,230 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Word on the celebrity real estate street down in Nashville is that after only six or so months of courting, country music up and comers Jana Kramer and Brantely Gilbert have taken the property plunge and purchased a house where they live together in unmarried bliss.

Well, children, we don't know a damn thing about where the Kramer-Gilberts play house now but our entirely unscientific research online turned up evidence that Miss Kramer recently sold her East Nashville bachelorette pad for, according to online documentation, $367,000.

Thirty year old Miss Kramer is probably best known by t.v. watchers for her former role on One Tree Hill and tabloid readers for her one month marriage in 2009 to Christina Applegate's ex-husband, the much older model turned actor/writer/producer Johnathan Schaech (That Thing That You Do, Models Inc.). In all honesty, neither Your Mama nor The Doctor Cooter had previously heard of Mister Gilbert but a few minutes batting around on the interweb tells us he's a bearded and tatted-up country rock singer-songwriter type who opened for country music superstar Toby Keith's Live in Overdrive tour this year.

Property records indicate Miss Kramer acquired the house, located in the heart of the historic Lockeland Springs 'hood just just over the Cumberland River a couple miles east of downtown Nashville, in October 2010 for $317,000.

We're not sure who was responsible for the make over—could be Miss Kramer, could be a previous owner—but listing information from the time of the most recent sale shows the completely renovated, 2,230 square foot clapboard-sided 1925 country cottage was done up and did over with a classic white picket fence, a deep and neighborly front porch and an Old Timey wooden porch swing.

The front door opens directly into the living room that spans the full width of the house and has soaring pitched and vaulted ceilings, hardwood flooring installed at a 45-degree angle and an awkwardly situated off-center stacked stone fireplace. 

The hardwood floors extend back through a wide corridor to a lipstick red walled dining area that connects over a nipple height breakfast bar to a remodeled but very ho-hum kitchen with olive green painted cabinetry, budget-minded black appliances, mottled grey counter tops of unknown material and—inexplicably and regrettably—a peachy-beige mottled tile floor.

Listing information indicates there are a total of three bedrooms and three bathrooms plus a multi-purpose loft area that overlooks the living room. There are two master suites, according to listing information, one upstairs with a Home Depot grade private bathroom and the other downstairs. The third bedroom makes use of a hall bathroom.

The back of the house doesn't exactly open itself wide to the outdoors but there are a couple of doors that connect to a raised back deck that overlooks the petite and barely landscaped, low-maintenance backyard. At the rear of the property an electronically-controlled driveway gates, accessible by way of an alley, allows for private, secure and direct automobile access to the partially subterranean basement level single car garage. 

If Mister Gilbert currently owns or owned a home in the Nashville area Your Mama has yet to figure it out.

listing photos: Re/Max Carriage House

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Housing Starts, Building Permits Rising Into 2013

Single-family housing starts took a small step back in November.

According to the monthly Housing Starts report from the U.S. Department of Commerce, single-family housing starts tallied 565,000 in November 2012 on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis. This marks a 4 percent decline from October, but is more than 100,000 higher than the count from 12 months ago.

Clearly, the nation's new home construction market is expanding.

On a regional basis, single-family housing starts have been strongest in the Midwest; and Hurricane Sandy appears to have affected the number of starts across the Northeast.

As compared to one year ago:

• Northeast Region : Housing starts down 19% on an annual basis
• Midwest Region : Housing starts up 40% on an annual basis
• South Region : Housing starts up 24% on an annual basis
• West Region : Housing starts up 33% on an annual basis

It's expected that new construction growth will continue into 2013, too. This is because the Department of Commerce report also showed Building Permits mostly unchanged for November at 565,000 units on a seasonally-adjusted annualized basis.

As compared to November 2011, this marks a 25% increase. Permits for multi-family homes are up 17%, too.

There are more building permits being issued today that at any time in the last 4 years.

For home buyers, this may be good news. Rising permits and housing starts suggests a more healthy U.S. economy, but it also means that home supplies may not be as tight throughout the next few months.

Overly-tight home supplies in some U.S. markets have contributed to rapidly rising home values. With more construction and larger home inventories, home prices may rise in 2013 less slowly.

The good news, though, is the mortgage rates in Seattle remain near all-time lows and low- and no-downpayment mortgage programs are abundant. For today's home buyer, there are plenty of affordable ways to purchase a home.

Talk with your real estate agent and your loan officer to see which plan works best for you.

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PSY Scoops Up a Condo in an L.A. High Rise

BUYER: PSY (nee Park Jae-sang)
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,249,000
SIZE: 2,776 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ reported today that budding music industry zeitgeist PSY—née Park Jae-sang (박재상, 朴載相)—paid $1.25 million in cold hard cash* for a two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom condo located on a very pedestrian lower floor of The Blair House, an exclusive, 29-story luxury high-rise building "near Beverly Hills."

For those of the children who may have somehow missed the pop cultural boat, PSY is a the South Korean-born bad boy K-pop** poster child who shot to international super stardom earlier this year with his catchy, high camp and high energy Gangnam Style music video that's been viewed almost a billion times on the You Tube.

PSY plans to give his new 2,776 square foot condo crib a face lift, according to TMZ, even thought listing information Your Mama dug up online shows that at the time of purchase in early November (2012) the condo was already done up in a slightly douched-out Gangnam Style with grey wall-to-wall carpeting in the main living areas, a gas fireplace surrounded by glammy mirrored panels, a small private terrace, a marble tile floored dining room and an angular eat-in kitchen with hardware-free flat-fronted cabinetry and high grade if out-dated appliances.

The master bedroom opens through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to a rather anorexic terrace with a trafficky view but does have a walk-in closet and an attached bathroom with marble topped double vanity and separate shower and jetted tub. The unit conveniently contains its own laundry room with full sized washer and dryer.

A foliage lined circular drive curves up to the building's well attended lobby that, well, to be honest, reeks of a little more late-1980s brass-trimmed glamour than we really feel comfortable with. The condo's $2,141 per month home owners dues help pay for the building's many amenities that include door man and concierge services, on-site valet parking, well maintained landscaped grounds, banquet facilities, a gym area with sauna, an outdoor salt water swimming pool and spa plus—a rarity among the luxury residential towers that line Wilshire Boulevard corridor between Westwood and Beverly Hills—a lighted and sunken tennis court.

For the record, the condo in question—the one shown in listing photos above—was purchased by someone with a Korean sounding name that Your Mama can not link directly to PSY. We have no reason to doubt our celebrity real estate compatriots at TMZ—heaven knows they snag a lot of intel about celebrity related property transactions—but for now this remains for Your Mama an unconfirmed rumor.
*Property records reveal the actual sale price for the condo in question was $1,249,000 and, for the record, the condo—the one shown in listing photos above—was purchased by someone with a Korean sounding name that Your Mama can not link directly to PSY. We have no reason to doubt our celebrity real estate compatriots at TMZ—heaven knows they snag a lot of intel about celebrity related property transactions—but for now this remains for Your Mama an unconfirmed rumor. 

**K-pop, in case y'all don't already know, is a genre of of music that Your Mama might describe as largely formulaic and stupidly over-polished but crazily popular and auditorily addictive bubble gum pop music produced at an alarmingly fast pace in South Korea. The New Yorker recently published an excellent primer on the globally emerging genre.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

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Ricky Martin Is An Uptown Daddy

BUYER: Ricky Martin
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE:3,147 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Once upon a celebrity real estate time booty-shaking Puerto Rican pop star/entertainer Ricky Martin owned sleek, 65th floor pied-a-terre at the twin-towered Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan that he bought in 2004 for just about $6.8 million and sold at an enviable multi-million dollar profit in 2006 for $9,750,000.

The following year (2007) Mister Martin hauled his real estate vida loca downtown to the then and still quite haute-ish Herzog & de Meuron-designed 40 Bond building where any number of celebrity property gossips—including Your Mama—reported he (allegedly) coughed up somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000,000 for a low floor apartment with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.*

Incidentally and as a slight aside, the fancy-pants 40 Bond building in the NoHo (North of Houston) nabe, is where fashion designer Calvin Klein was reported earlier today in the New York Post to have signed a short term lease on a $25,000 per month two bedroom spread. Seventy year old Mister Klein—who can not be at all happy about the possibly pending publication of a probably embarrassing tell-all book by his blabber mouthed 21-year old former lover Nick Gruber—has sought temporary refuge at 40 Bond from  his far more grand West Village triplex penthouse after hurricane Sandy compromised and/or destroyed the building's basement level services.

Anyhoo, sometime last year Mister Martin and his long-time man-friend Carlos Gonzalez Abella packed up his/their toddler-age boy twins and shook their bon bons all the way back uptown to the full service Lucida building on East 85th Street where he/they leased a seventh floor quadruple exposure sprawler with five bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, an 800 square foot corner living room, an eat-in kitchen and a last listed monthly rent of $32,500. For the record, the apartment has been back up for lease since mid-November (2012) with a notably higher $37,500 monthly rent price. 

Today comes word slips down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine via the NewYork Post that Mister Martin has opted to own a piece of The Big Apple with the $5,900,000 purchase of a sun drenched and (essentially) south facing two-unit combination condo crib in a contemporary—some might say rather bland—10-story Peter Marino-designed building that faces Gracie Mansion and the playgrounds, open fields and dog run at Carl Shurz Park.

The eight-room apartment, according to listing information, measures in at 3,147 square feet with generous 10 foot ceilings and over-sized floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor plan included with marketing materials shows there's a proper foyer in which to greet guests and the Chinese food delivery man and a double-wide—if otherwise architecturally featureless—living/dining room with Old Timey pre-war style parquet floors. There's also a pequeño eat-in kitchen, a small (windowed) mud room off the service entrance and a fairly narrow study/den all done up in listing photos as a children's playroom.

There are, according to listing information, a total of four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms including two small(ish) guest/family bedrooms with private bathrooms. A pair of master bedrooms, at opposite ends of the apartment, both have multiple closets and attached windowless bathrooms slathered in top quality beige travertine tile.

The monthly common charges and taxes for the apartment Mister Martin (allegedly) bought total $4,729, according to listing information. The 100-plus unit building's extensive, residents only amenities include a state of the art fitness center, squash court, Pilates room, yoga studio, 40 seat screening room, golf simulator, library, arcade room and children's playrooms.

As it turns out Mister Martin has been on a bit of a real estate tear the last eight or nine months. Since at least mid-2007 he's repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to dump a walled and gated bay front mansion in Miami Beach (FL) that he bought in May 2005 for ten million dollars. At one point the 7 bedroom and 8 full and two half bathroom spread (above) was listed for $16,900,000. The asking price inexplicably climbed to $19.5 million in 2008. Alas, property records show Mister Martin had to accept a much, much lower offer when, according to property records, he finally sold the unwanted waterfront estate in April of this year (2012) for $10,600,000 to a clearly well-compensated Long Island-based computer retail executive named Richard Leeds.

In April 2007, just about the time he listed his above mentioned bay front mansion in Miami Beach, Mister Martin coughed up a star-style $16,250,000 for a nearly 10,000 square foot ocean front mansion about 10 miles to the north in sleepy but swank Golden Beach. By December of that year he'd caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estae Fickle and hoisted the five bedroom and seven bathroom house (above) back on the open market with a sky-high asking price of $22,500,000. Property records reveal Mister Martin's original asking price was wildly optimistic because he finally, at long last, sold the gated property last month for $12,800,000. A few quick clickety-clacks of the well-worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's almost ten million less than he wanted and, even worse, a spectacular $3,450,000 less than he paid for the place five and some years ago. Ouch!

As far as Your Mama knows, Mister Martin continues to own a substantial residence in Dorado, Puerto Rico—where the American Rockefellers once owned a vacation compound—as well as, so the celebrity real estate rumors go, a casa in Madrid and a private island hideaway in Rio de Janeiro.

*In all honesty, children, Your Mama does not find much if any evidence that Señor Bon Bon bought an apartment at 40 Bond. Could be that he did and we just can't suss it out or could be that he rented in the building.

listing photos and floor plan (New York City, top): Corcoran
listing photos (Miami Beach): EWM Realtors International
listing photos (Golden Beach): Zillow

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Tampa Real Estate | 2012 Year in Review

The real estate market has seen an abundance of activity in 2012, both positive and promising.  The local Tampa real estate market has shown significant growth since January.   It continues to point in the right direction.

We started the year off hoping that the unemployment rate would continue to fall. To our benefit, it has fallen over 1.7% which is far better than the national average.  There were also predictions of an increase in new home construction stemming from depleted inventory resulting in a more balanced supply and demand curve.

Jumping forward, September realized more new home starts than any month in the past four years!  Not only is this a strong indicator of builder confidence, which was the highest it has been in six years, but new home starts result in construction jobs created.  Economists from the Home Builder Group suggest that with each new home built, three additional jobs are created and about ninety thousand dollars in tax revenue are generated.        

Back to spring of 2012, home prices and home sales were on the rise, as expected. Chief economist Lawrence Yun suggested that this was due to a recent rise in job growth and the rising prices of rental properties. It made sense to purchase a home!  Tampa, Florida was mentioned as one of the highest ranking recovering cities by Clear Capital Research, only behind two other metro cities in the United States. The light at the end of the tunnel was clearly visible for the Florida real estate market in the early spring 2012.  However, there were still some claiming it was too early to say for certain.

As the year progressed, more and more real estate headlines offered data about home affordability.    The real estate experts explained the factors that were driving home affordability to new levels that made it a clear choice to be a property owner.  For example, in April the housing affordability index in Tampa, Florida market was higher than most cities in the U.S.  Moe Veissi, President of NAR, suggested that if mortgage rates continued to fall, we would realize a larger increase in real estate activity nationally, and in the Tampa market.   Little did he know that in November 2012, our national mortgage rates would drop to the lowest all time rate of 3.31%, while only a year ago, rates hovered around 3.94%!   National and international buyers fueled the Florida market during this part of 2012.  The Tampa / St. Petersburg areas made the “top ten” list of U.S. hotspots for foreign real estate investors. These cash ready investor buyers accounted for 31% of all real estate transactions in Florida!

As the summer continued in Tampa, Florida signs of growth were sustained.  The average listing price of a property had increased 14% from the previous year.  The gap between listing prices and home sales price was rapidly widening.  Further, we saw homes being sold for $126K when they were purchased for the $80k range only a year ago.  Now the average median sales price has increased about $15k. Property inventory plays a big role in this real estate market trend. A decrease of inventory in the range of 24% from the previous year, coupled with new short sale guidelines set forth by the FHFA,  are influencing factors to the upward trend of the real estate market as a whole in Florida. These guidelines have helped to diminish the activity of short sales and foreclosures, which previously were a drag on home values in many communities.  As a result of these influences, multiple offer scenarios became commonplace in Tampa.  Bidding wars produced quicker and higher home sale prices.  The burden of showing homes for sellers was minimal.   On the buyer side, the scenario spelled out higher initial offers and taking advantage of “cheap money” due to low interest rates.

As we close out 2012 on an encouraging note, it is prudent to recap this year’s improvements in Tampa, as well as on a national level. Real estate closings for existing home sales are up 25.3% from a year ago while the prices of these homes also increased 11.4%.  Even Dr. John Tuccillo, Chief economist of Florida Realtors, was impressed of the year over gains and took note of the depth of our real estate recovery.

We would be glad to discuss your real estate goals for 2013 at your earliest convenience. We encourage everyone who is able to take advantage of this market to do so, whether you are a real estate buyer, a conventional or short sale seller, an investor, this opportunity is golden. Best wished to you and your family in 2013!

SI Real Estate offers highly personalized, multilingual, full-spectrum real estate purchase and sales services. We are a boutique for sophisticated investors, select owners or renters who may be upgrading locally, or those making traditional relocations. We also provide turnkey landlord and tenant management. Blending comprehensive insight into the Tampa Bay area with international perspectives for a worldwide clientele, we like to think that “SI Real Estate is Global Real Estate in Every Way!”

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3 Ways To Purchase Foreclosed Properties

The process of buying a foreclosed home is slightly different from the process of buying a non-foreclosure home.  If you want to invest in Seattle foreclosures, therefore, it is important to understand the different ways by which to purchase a foreclosed home.

There are three main ways to buy a foreclosed home.

Buying before the auction
Some delinquent homeowners may want to sell their homes before facing an actual foreclosure.In this instance, the homeowner, in agreement with the lender, agrees to sell the home for less than the amount owed on the mortgage.This is called a short sale. Short sales are "pre-foreclosures", of sorts. By broadening your home search to include short sales, you can identify homes that may be sold at a discount.

Buying at the auction
Another way by which you can invest in foreclosure homes is by buying the home at auction. From area to area, the legal requirements for the sale of a foreclosed home at auction may differ. If you plan to buy at auction, you'll want to be familiar with your area's customary judicial proceedings.

Buying after the auction
Buying after the auction means buying bank-owned properties. This can be the most lucrative and safest means of investing foreclosure properties. This is because lenders often reduce the sales prices of their home inventory in order to "sell it quickly". It can be expensive for banks to own foreclosed homes, and few banks are equipped for managing owned homes. Check with your local real estate agent to see what, if any, bank-owned homes are available for sale in your area.

The process of buying a distressed home is different from the process of buying a "traditional" one. Therefore, regardless of which path you follow to buy a foreclosed property, have an experienced real estate professional on your team.

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Thoreau Slept Here

by Beth Herman   


In his quest for an unembellished life, transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau took to the woods with perhaps a not-so-novel battle cry. "Our life is frittered away by detail," he famously wrote. "Simplify. Simplify."

In their pursuit of a renovation and addition to a 1950s modern house that would reflect a Thoreau-esque aesthetic, and also court the abundance of mature trees around their Arlington, Virginia property, homeowners Jed and Marie joined forces with award-winning architect Patrick Carter of Reve Design Studio to achieve their goal.

'The client had a 1 1/2-story house with a master suite, kitchen and living room on the first floor and a tiny hallway with two secondary bedrooms on the second," Carter said of the 1,666 s.f. residence. "It was an open floorplan and though not really a formal space, there were no informal places for the kids to play." At certain times of the year, it also provided a view of the D.C. skyline.

Parents of two young children, Jed grew up in a modern Michigan home designed and built by an architect father. Marie is a card-carrying minimalist, according to Carter, and creating a modern-minimalist residence for a growing family that tipped its hat (or roof slope) to nature was a tall architectural order.

With a program to keep the master on the first floor and add 549 s.f. by reconfiguring the upstairs to maintain the two children's bedrooms, but add a family room, home office/music room (the family plays multiple instruments), and also retain a portion of the roof deck as a second floor balcony, Carter reached out to Mike Madden and John Page of Madden Corporation (construction) and Andrew Greene of Potomac Woodwork. A prodigious use of custom millwork came to define the new space, including a strong display of sandblasted rift-cut oak door panels between the family room and office/music room.

"Sandblasting eats away at the soft grain and leaves a physical texture - not just a visual one," Carter explained. The result of a "tricky" treatment in the drywall, when the closet doors are closed there are five equal segments: two wood and three wall.

With the design driven largely by Marie's need to compartmentalize and eliminate clutter, the house, which had virtually no storage, received a series of ample closets with double doors in the new space. Keeping the rooms open, furnishings are sleek and spare, including designs by LeCorbussier, Marcel Bruer and Charles and Ray Eames. And because you're up in the trees, Carter explained, keeping a clean color palette was imperative to draw attention out to the home's exterior. To that end white oak flooring, originally found on the first level, is carried through upstairs, along with pristine white walls and ceiling.


Room with a view
"Because the house is on a hill in the woods, and there's no yard, having a way to be outside was important. We wanted to keep that outdoor space on the second floor," Carter said of the now Ipe-decked balcony with tongue-in-groove cedar ceiling, citing the tree house effect as a key design component. Double-paned, low-E floor-to-ceiling windows, operable at the bottom and at full length on the ends, give the effect of "stepping out into the trees," as does the bay that cantilevers out, extending beyond the building's main box envelope.

With Jed an Air Force Academy graduate, the idea to represent the roof line as an inverted wing also provided the opportunity for a Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie-style moment inside the home. As the roof butterflies with the low point at the center of the house, the occupants' experience of the space is compressed, beginning with the 8-foot. ceiling height, and then swept up and out through the expansive glass, where the ceiling is 10 feet.

On the exterior, bronze accents and siding in muted green tones - specifically Benjamin Moore Nantucket Gray and Celery Salt - harmonize with the surrounding Evergreens and other arbors. Carter worked to preserve the existing 1950s brick and matched its natural-hued mortar with the exterior paint choices so not to create additional maintenance issues for the homeowners.

Cable rails, creating an open and closed railing system, were a device to open up the outdoor space as much as possible. Though the house is in the woods, there are neighbors on either side and across the street. "It was a balance of privacy and openness, of taking advantage of the views and still allowing privacy if you're out on the deck," Carter explained.

Showing you the door


Recalling that the first time he went to the Arlington house a solid wall atop a brick wall prevented him from finding the front door, opening the front to engage the street was paramount for the architect. "It was a little foreboding and unapproachable," Carter said, identifying a rhythm of open and closed cable railing systems that now punctuate the building.

Seinfeld and I

With a nod to the episode where Jerry's new girlfriend, a victim of capricious lighting, looked alternately angelic and haggard, Carter's lighting tenets include horizontal lighting as opposed to direct, overhead, which he firmly eschews. "Some architects tend to fill a room with recessed lights, somewhere in the middle, which is not always flattering when they shine down on you," he explained, adding the key is to light the room's perimeter so it bounces off the walls for a gentler result.

Delving into his architecture philosophy, the professed closet Frederick Law Olmsted said the way he thinks about work is in terms of something "subtractive.

"A lot of architects think about design as additive," he explained. "They say you're creating a building on the land, so you're adding something to it. But when I get into design, it's a lot like pushing and pulling of volumes so you're breaking the box - carving out spaces. In this project you see it on the front porch and how it works with the bay window above above that protrudes. On the second floor the deck is recessed."

Citing a personal mantra and phrase, "levels of 'insidedness'," as a student Carter recalls an architecture professor who told him a door is more than a hole in the wall. "It's all about approach and that level of 'insidedness,'" he affirmed. "Are you inside when you climb the stairs to the front porch? Are you inside when you cross the threshold of that beam and column? What about when you're covered but then you take a step to the right and you're not? Architecture is about creating a progression - a series of stills." 

Photos courtesy of Paul Burk

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