Home Ownership

Saticoy-based Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. will celebrate the opening Saturday of the Home Ownership Center, a one-stop facility for prospective home buyers to receive home ownership counseling and mortgage loan services. Opening festivities for the program, administered by the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by local elected officials, plus food, music and information booths.

Film producer and clothing entrepreneur Brad Zions has sold his house in the Hollywood Hills West area for $7.95 million. Among notables in the home's ownership history is actor Richard Gere , according to the Movieland Directory. The gated contemporary features views of the Los Angeles basin, a two-story entry, a bar, three en suite bedrooms, three additional bathrooms and a home theater. Outside the 4,534-square-foot home is a swimming pool, spa, deck, outdoor living room and kitchen.

Re "Le Parc Condos Legal Tangle Resolved," Jan. 27. This article recounts the litigious nightmare that Simi Valley Le Parc homeowners have had to endure while trying to protect their life investment--their homes. I have watched this story closely as well as the many other homeowners association nightmares unfolding across the nation. Reading and educating oneself on the governing documents prior to purchasing a home in an HOA does not guarantee you protection against your own nightmare.

Newt Gingrich, who has built his now resurgent presidential candidacy in part around virulent criticism of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, found himself Wednesday defending the at least $1.6 million he reportedly earned while under contract to Freddie. While campaigning in Iowa, Gingrich was besieged by reporters asking him about a Bloomberg News report that his consulting firm took in much more from Freddie Mac than previously reported. The former House speaker said he didn't know how much he had received from the federally backed mortgage company, but that he welcomed the inquiry into his private-sector work.

Brad Sherman's article ("For Homeowners, the Flat Tax Doesn't Add Up," June 21) unwittingly illustrates the liberals' muddle-headed policies on both taxation and homeownership. First, local regulation-crazy governments constrict housing supplies with restricted zoning and various "slow-growth" regulations that in reality serve NIMBY interest at the expense of public good. Then, as home prices predictably go through the roof, along comes Sherman and croons: "There, there, poor babies. Let generous Uncle Sam help you out with tax deductions to lower the net payments on your overpriced homes."

A report released at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Reno cites gaps between white and black home purchasing that could supply officials the grist for a wider dialogue. More than 4 million people have joined the ranks of homeowners in the last three years to lift the national home ownership rate to a record 65.7%, according to the study released by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. But a wide disparity exists between white and minority home ownership.

United Savings Bank will sponsor educational seminars designed to help low- and moderate-income families buy homes. Attendance at one of the seminars, which cover such aspects of home ownership as budgeting and obtaining a mortgage, is a requirement of qualifying for a bank program of loans with 5% down, eased credit requirements and reduced closing costs. The cost of the Saturday seminars, held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., is $7.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has a goal of getting as many Americans into their own homes as possible, had a $26-billion budget for fiscal year 2000 signed into law. HUD will get $1.5 billion more than in the previous year's budget. The agency's programs continue to push the U.S. homeownership rates beyond the current record level of about 66% and provide rental assistance programs for economically disadvantaged families.

Home ownership in the U.S. reached its highest quarterly level in nearly 17 years from April to June, Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo said in a statement. In the second quarter, 65.7% of households owned their residences, up 0.3 percentage point from the first quarter. Home ownership rose 0.4 percentage point to 45.7% among minorities, 0.5 percentage point to 72.1% among whites and 0.8 percentage point to 51.3% among households headed by women. The central city ownership rate edged up 0.

The American dream of home ownership is alive and well, judging by the outcome of a Better Homes and Gardens study conducted before mortgage rates started sliding downward. The study, titled "Inquiry on Housing," found that if respondents were to move in the near future, 82% would choose a single-family detached home. Nearly 25% indicated that they anticipate a move within six years.

Whether it's the Seychelles islands, Bangkok or the French countryside, this real estate fairy tale unfolds in the same fashion: a buyer looks at three houses and, like Goldilocks, picks the one that's just right. In this corner of reality TV, there are no gut-wrenching financing issues, no mortgage worries or closing negotiations, no tedious weekends full of overpriced open houses. This is HGTV's surprise hit program "House Hunters International," where travelogue meets fantasy for a happy ending.

We live in an era of economic anxiety. There have been other such eras, but this one seems particularly acute. Though the actual fortunes of Americans differ widely, there is a shared sense of something not right. That sentiment acts as a negative glue, binding Americans in a collective malaise. In the words of economist and professor Robert E. Wright, America today is a FUBAR economy, a system that is "fouled up beyond all recognition. " In a series of essays that constitute his uneven yet entertaining book, Wright explores key examples of the "Fubarnomics" that characterize the United States today.

Living small is the new virtue. We have less clean air, water and land. Most of us have a lot less money. Fortunately, out here where the dream used to include a house of your own, we pioneered how to do simple very well. We built the box bungalow. The last time the U.S. had a small-house surge was around 1900. Post-Civil War greed unleashed a progressive cry. Reformers announced that all citizens — new immigrants, working men and women, people on farms and in crumbling tenements — were entitled to a place to live.

Amid a continuing mortgage meltdown across the nation, Congress has begun efforts to revive a controversial housing program to provide down payments for low- and moderate-income families. The program was killed late last year by the Bush administration and Congress due to concerns that its default rate was too high -- two to three times higher than standard mortgages, according to one government estimate.

When my wife and I and our two small children moved late last year to Glassell Park, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, we were following a predictable gentrification script. The nearby enclaves of Eagle Rock and Mount Washington were slightly out of our price range, having already attracted those who had been edged out of the previous round of gentrification in Silver Lake, Echo Park and Franklin Hills.

Bankers and housing market analysts are warning of a chilling new trend in the mortgage world: homeowners voluntarily defaulting on their loans even though they can afford to make the payments. It's known colloquially as "walking away," or more jocularly as "jingle mail," for the sound your house keys supposedly make when you mail them back to your bank. It's a way of saying that Americans are beginning to apply a cold financial calculation to home ownership: When a home's value has fallen below what is owed on its mortgage, they think it makes no sense to keep up the payments.

In front of a tree-shaded home on 3rd Avenue in Leimert Park, what Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas called prime real estate, city officials and financiers announced a home loan program designed to increase home ownership in the inner city. "This will give deserving people the chance to buy a decent new place to live," said Ridley-Thomas, who spent a year coordinating the program, called Home Works! "For too long, people have associated affordable housing with rental units and projects.

Thousands of Cubans will be able to get title to state-owned homes under regulations published Friday, a step that might lay the groundwork for broader reforms. The measure was the first legal decree formally published since Raul Castro succeeded his brother Fidel as president in February. The decree spells out rules to let Cubans renting from their state employers keep their apartment or house after leaving their posts. They could gain title and even pass it on to their children or relatives.

Few experiences skirt closer to the absurdity of farce than the process of remodeling a home. The delirious dislocations of Feydeau have nothing on the moment when your contractor informs you that the cute little faucet you picked up on the cheap will cost a college education to install. Oh, and that wall will have to go. Excruciating as it is in real life, the comedy of contracting is a dicey proposition on screen as well.