San Francisco Office Market Cools in Q3
San Francisco’s scorching office market took a breather during Q3 2007 as both tenants and investors remained cautious due to jitters over the credit crunch and escalating rents. The city posted its 13th straight quarter of positive absorption, which included 120,000 sf absorbed in the central business district. Rent increases dropped slightly, with average rates growing 3.8% in Q3 2007, well below the 16.4% spike seen during the first six months of the year, according to Grubb & Ellis.

Stretching Milk

With milk being so expensive, we were having a rough time keeping it in
the house with my five children, but we were getting plenty of instant
milk from the food pantry. So with a little experimentation, I found
that I can follow the instant milk recipe to make 1/2 gallon milk and
then add 1/2 gallon of whole milk to it to make a full gallon. There’s no
change in taste and it makes the regular milk last a whole lot longer.

Janet

Preparing for One-Income Living

Shortly after the new year, John and Mona Breidenstein started to get anxious about their $427,000 adjustable-rate mortgage. The interest rate would reset this year, and the Santa Maria, Calif., couple feared they wouldn’t be able to afford the higher payments.

When they got the loan in 2005, a broker had assured them they’d be able to refinance before their payments jumped. But that was before home prices fell, loans became harder to get, foreclosure sale signs appeared down the block and John had to take five months off work to battle cancer.
For eight months, they say, they pleaded with their lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., to modify their loan — to no avail.

Long-term mortgage rates came down this week on news that home sales and prices fell to lows not seen in several years, according to surveys conducted by Freddie Mac and Bankrate.com.

In Freddie Mac’s survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to an average 6.37 percent from 6.42 percent last week, while the average 15-year fixed rate sank to 6.03 percent from 6.09 percent. Points, which are fees lenders charge for loan processing expressed as a percent of the loan, averaged 0.5 on the 30- and 15-year loans.

A foreclosures report by real estate research and data company PropertyShark.com for four major U.S. metro areas revealed a 247 percent rise in foreclosures in Los Angeles in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year.

The report defines a foreclosure as a property scheduled for a foreclosure auction for the first time during the period and focuses on new foreclosures — not properties that have been in and out of foreclosure or have had auctions postponed. The metro areas studied include Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and Seattle.