Real Estate Industry

MANY see trouble in falling home prices and rising foreclosures. Karen Krynen sees opportunity. So after dropping her two children off at preschool one day last month, Krynen headed for Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk, where foreclosed houses were being auctioned on the steps outside. The ponytailed Krynen spotted a small crowd gathered against the building's towering, black-marble portico.

Suspense over whether the Gas Co. Tower in downtown Los Angeles will remain the headquarters of Southern California Gas Co. is over: The big utility is staying put in its signature tower for the next 15 years. Real estate industry analysts had been watching to see whether the gas company would bail out on troubled landlord MPG Office Trust Inc., formerly Maguire Properties Inc., and move its offices elsewhere. Southern California Gas said Wednesday that it would keep its more than 1,300 employees in 350,000 square feet in the building at 555 W. Fifth St., where it has been the anchor tenant since the tower was completed in 1991.

The recent craze for converting apartment buildings to condominiums, which is drawing political heat in Los Angeles and elsewhere, may be slowed by market forces before City Hall has a chance to act. One possible indication of a coming slump was the number of people willing to pay $1,800 for investment advice on the topic.

The expiring federal tax credit for home shoppers has put some froth back in the Southland's real estate market: People are ditching work to search for new digs, plundering savings for down payments and striking as fast as they can to sign contracts ahead of the Friday deadline. Buyers can get a tax break of up to $8,000 for first-time purchasers and $6,500 for some current homeowners if they reach agreements by April 30 and seal their deals by June 30. California lawmakers sweetened the package last month by passing a $10,000 credit that kicks in Saturday.

There are homes. And then there is Candy Land -- all 56,500 square feet of it. Candy Spelling, widow of legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling, has put her 4.7-acre residence in Holmby Hills up for sale. Priced at $150 million, it's currently the most expensive residential listing in the U.S. Whether Spelling will have to take a haircut on that asking price in today's market remains to be seen. If so, she'll be prepared: The home has its own barbershop. Plus a whole lot more.

The home mortgage market, propped up by more than $1 trillion in government money, is flashing a strong "buy" sign to house hunters. Extending a summer-long slide, the average interest rate on new 30-year fixed-rate loans nationwide has broken through the 5% barrier to 4.97%, nearing the lowest level in decades, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. reported this week. And mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac, which separately tracks rates, reported Thursday that the average fixed rate on a 15-year home loan had dropped to 4.46%, the lowest level on record.

A Laguna Niguel woman was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assisting real estate professionals to fraudulently obtain more than $5 million in loans that were insured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Kelli Davis Peterson, 42, who worked at R.E. Mortgage of Anaheim, was indicted Jan. 16 by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles. The indictment charges her with six counts of wire fraud.

Real estate website Zillow.com became an instant hit by telling homeowners -- and their nosy neighbors -- how much their houses might be worth. Now, the Seattle-based company will help owners get the word out about how much they want in a sale. Starting today, Zillow Inc. joins a growing list of websites that allows homeowners and real estate agents to post virtual "For Sale" signs for free. The feature also plugs a hole on the site, which touts a database of more than 60 million U.S.

A picture may be worth a mere 1,000 words in other circles, but in real estate, it enters the realm of deal or no deal. With an estimated 80% of home buyers starting their search on the Internet, photos are to home sales today what curb appeal used to be: the place where first impressions are made. According to a National Assn. of Realtors survey of the Web features that buyers found "very useful," 83% mentioned photos, 81% liked detailed property information and 60% named virtual tours.

The rich may indeed be like the rest of us. Prices of their homes are now falling too. Gated mansions and hillside estates have held their own through most of the real estate slump, but data released Monday showed big drops in the region's most exclusive neighborhoods. Median sale prices fell by 13% in Beverly Hills in April, compared with the same month last year.

Southern California property professionals are saying good riddance to 2009's rising office vacancies and falling rents, and conjuring hope for somewhat better times later this year. The recession brought layoffs to many white-collar companies, prompting tenants to downsize their offices and sometimes plead for rent reductions. Strapped landlords saw their revenues fall as fewer tenants paid less money to occupy their buildings. Real estate brokerage Colliers International tellingly headlined a recent report: "2009: End of a year gone bad."

Bill Hoffman has logged more than 1.5 million airline miles in his travels to troubled hotels, office buildings and other business properties. As a court-appointed receiver who takes care of distressed commercial real estate, Hoffman has a long way to go to catch up with George Clooney's ambitiously nomadic character Ryan Bingham in "Up in the Air." But Hoffman is adding mileage points fast. These are boom times for receivers. With the brutal real estate market causing owners to lose their buildings to their lenders, more professionals like Hoffman are being tapped to look after properties until they can be resold.

The number of homes placed under sales contracts tumbled in November from the previous month, presenting fresh evidence that the nascent housing recovery could be poised for a dip in the new year. The National Assn. of Realtors said Tuesday that its pending home sales index -- a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in November -- fell 16% to 96 from an upwardly revised 114.3 in October. But the index still was 15.5% higher than for November 2008, when it was 83.1.

San Francisco and Tampa, Fla., sit at opposite corners of the country and at opposite ends of the housing recovery. As home prices are picking up nationally, the San Francisco Bay Area has shown improvement for seven consecutive months and posted the strongest gains in home prices in October out of 20 metropolitan regions, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index, a closely watched national measure of home prices, which was released Tuesday....

A supply of 1.7 million homes headed for sale because of foreclosure or delinquency looms over the nation's housing market, which could dampen progress toward recovery should the Obama administration fail in its efforts to aid struggling homeowners, researchers said. A variety of measures to keep discounted bank-owned properties off the market -- including moratoriums on foreclosures by major lenders and federal initiatives aimed at keeping people in their homes with mortgage payments they can afford -- has helped increase a backlog of so-called shadow inventory 55% in the year ended Sept.

Home builders broke ground on new residences at a faster clip in November than in October, a positive sign for the housing market and the residential real estate industry. Housing starts rose 8.9% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 574,000 units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. However, that figure represented a 12.4% decline from November 2008. The jump can be attributed in part to a shift in weather patterns, Patrick Newport, U.S. economist for Global Insight, said in a note to clients.

Like bread crumbs in an urban forest, the telltale open house flags have been planted along a tantalizing route in Brentwood, leading from Mandeville Canyon to a little street called Kimberly Lane. At the end of the trail is not grandmother's cottage, however. It is a driveway. A very long driveway, where a black Ferrari is parked, not quite perfectly.

Harold "Hal" A. Ellis Jr., a founder of real estate services firm Grubb & Ellis Co. and one of the best known figures in U.S. real estate, died Monday of metastatic melanoma at his home in Piedmont, Calif. He was 77. Ellis built a small Oakland brokerage into a powerhouse whose circular yellow and black signs dot thousands of stores, offices, factories and other commercial properties for sale or lease across the country.

Interest rates on home mortgages edged higher this week, bouncing off record lows, but fixed-rate loans are still averaging well below 5% for those who are coming out of the recession with solid credit and can muster 20% down. Those lucky borrowers were getting 30-year fixed loans at an average of 4.81% for the week ending Thursday, according to Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage buyer and guarantor. On those loans, the borrowers were paying 0.7% of the loan amount in upfront lender fees including so-called points.

Joyce Ann Cato is out of work and about to lose her San Bernardino home to foreclosure. The 62-year-old special-education teacher filed for bankruptcy protection last April in a bid to keep her house, which is worth less than what she owes on a mortgage she can't afford anymore. As Cato searches for another job, she and her daughter, Minjoy, have landed in a Pomona house that they rent for $1,795 a month, substantially less than the old mortgage payment but still a hefty chunk of the mother's $2,500 monthly income.