Buyers

The investment group that signed a contract a month ago to buy the Brass Elephant did not come up with the necessary deposit by Monday's deadline, a real estate broker involved in the deal said. "We have not gotten a deposit," said Kemp Byrnes, a broker representing the seller. "That's all I can tell you." But Byrnes said the deal is not dead. He said there is still "a conversation that's going on between the seller and buyer." The Brass Elephant building, at 924 N. Charles St. in Mount Vernon, has been vacant since the storied fine-dining establishment closed in August.

Baltimore-area home sales rose 15 percent in April compared with a year earlier, and newly pending deals soared as buyers kicked the spring housing market into higher gear, according to data released Friday. Prices remained largely unchanged at $238,000 for the typical home in the region — Baltimore and its five suburban counties. That remains well under the region's April peak of $275,000 six years ago, after the housing bubble pushed up prices but before the bust and financial crisis deflated them.

Potential buyers for the Brass Elephant, who failed to come up with a deposit Monday, still want to go ahead with the deal, an owner of the shuttered Mount Vernon restaurant said Tuesday. Randy Stahl and the other owners closed the fine-dining establishment in August and put the building that housed it up for sale. An investment group planning to put a restaurant in the location signed a contract on the building a month ago and had until Monday to put down a deposit. The money never came.

On the face of it, I and most other gun owners agree with the recent letter from Liz Kato and Joanne Locke ("Stop 'straw buyers' from purchasing guns," April 15). No responsible gun owner is OK with straw purchases. Any bill specifically aimed at straw purchases is a good idea. However, it never stops there. The proposed legislation always goes further and winds up punishing legal gun owners. That is the reason gun owners don't want these bills to become law. Limit the bill to straw purchases, with no extraneous amendments attached, and I'm sure we will all be OK with it. Clay Seeley, Owings Mills Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

We're going to make this a simple bar blog today. The Orioles are still clinging to the second American League Wild Card spot - a ½-game ahead of three teams. So, yes, they are still very much in the postseason race on July 16. But 4/5 of the Orioles' Opening Day rotation is either hurt or in the minors. Right now, the club's most experienced big league starter is 24-year-old Chris Tillman, who has made 37  major league starts - and just one this year. That could change Wednesday when someone - maybe Tommy Hunter - takes the spot of Jason Hammel, who is having knee surgery and will be lost for roughly a month, maybe longer.

A Washington fish wholesaler and two of its buyers have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Greenbelt for their alleged roles in the largest striped bass poaching case in Chesapeake Bay history. Ocean Pro Ltd., also known as Profish, and Timothy Lydon of Bethesda and Benjamin Clough of Grasonville have been charged in federal district court with purchasing illegally caught striped bass from the Maryland and Virginia portions of the Potomac River from 1995 through 2007.

Thinking about buying a first home this year but haven't quite made up your mind?President Bush has a proposal designed to lure people like you off the sidelines and into a mortgage.It's a $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers. If Congress approves, it would work something like this:People who haven't owned a home for at least three years would qualify for the credit if they buy a house between Feb. 1 and Dec. 31, 1992.Contracts for homes signed by Dec. 31 would count, too, as long as the sale is closed by June 30, 1993.

The address may be Retreat Street, but there was nothing but forward motion yesterday as the first nine buyers took title to new three-bedroom town houses built as part of the massive Baltimore Nehemiah project in West Baltimore.Mary and Paul Malachi and Willa Mae Wilson were the first buyers to complete their settlements yesterday and receive keys to their just-finished homes in the 1500 block of Retreat Street.Their houses are among the first of 300 new or rehabilitated residences that are being built this year in the Penn-North and Sandtown-Winchester areas.

OCEAN CITY -- Gathered for a long and windy weekend in this seaside town, real estate agents from across the state are trying to get to the bottom of some nagging questions.With a slow summer behind them and with rates still relatively low, whatever happened to the pent-up demand that had been expected from buyers? In fact, they've been wondering, where exactly are all the buyers?It's not that business is as bad as two years ago, according to participants at the Maryland Association of Realtors annual convention here.

Today's highly-sought-after homebuyer might be found cruising the streets in search of "For Sale" signs or traipsing through yet another open house. Or he might be home waiting by the phone.Officials at Prudential Preferred Properties are betting on the latter -- and hoping to reach out and touch some buyers.Through a new telephone-sales program intended to meet changing needs in an increasingly competitive market, the company hopes to contact potential buyers by targeting areas based on demographics.

We've heard that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. But how about keeping guns out of the hands of the bad guys in the first place? Right now, there is no federal law that punishes people who buy guns for criminals who are banned from purchasing firearms themselves. In a recent TV interview, Rep. Elijah Cummings spoke about a guy in Georgia whose girlfriend bought him 64 guns in less than three months. Some of those guns ended up at crime scenes in Maryland, a state in which it is much harder to buy guns.

How could it be that even a single U.S. senator - no matter how opposed to gun control - could vote to hold up consideration of a proposal to require background checks for gun purchases? This is an idea not only embraced by something in the order of 91 percent of the American public but 85 percent of National Rifle Association members. Yet, there it was. Thirty-one senators voted against allowing the Senate to debate the background check proposal this morning. That was a victory, of sorts, as some senators had threatened to filibuster the procedural vote.

Selling a house is rarely easy and quick, but the transaction for the three-story end-of-group brick rowhouse at 200 Warren Ave.e in Federal Hill was just that. The property listed and sold simultaneously, closing for $950,000 after being offered at $995,000. Little wonder. The home was built just five years ago in the same architectural style and detail as the older homes around it. Additionally, it is within walking distance to the Inner Harbor and shops and restaurants on Light and Charles streets.

The last time Yasmin and Adil Degani bought a home, they took the traditional route. They went with a commission-based real estate brokerage to show them homes and guide them through the homebuying process. This time around, in an effort to save money and time, they decided to try an emerging path. The Odenton couple went with Redfin, a "technology-powered brokerage" that employs salaried agents and encourages buyers to use online profiles of homes to determine what properties to tour.

It should be relatively easy for a judge to make a decision in the matter of the small landscape painted on a napkin by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir ("U.S. court enters fray over painting," March 16). Museum collections managers and registrars adhere to the English Common Law concept, recognized in modern American jurisprudence, that deed does not follow theft, even after several changes of hands; the original owner remains the owner. Since the Baltimore Museum of Art was the original, legal owner of the painting (it having been left to the museum in an unchallenged will)

A Baltimore judge sentenced Jason K. Hamel to 50 years in prison for the Federal Hill murder of an alleged drug dealer who tricked him into paying $5,000 for a T-shirt he said was a package of cocaine. The shooting happened in 800 block of Battery Avenue on June 20, 2008 when Hamel, 33, went to meet his victim Keyva Bluitt and two other men to do the supposed drug deal. Hamel picked up the package at around 9:15 p.m. and soon realized the deception, according to the Baltimore state's attorney's office.

Near the peak of the housing frenzy four years ago, 75 percent of homes sold in the Baltimore metro area went to buyers with conventional mortgages - loans not insured by government agencies. Now such deals are much fewer and farther between. Thirty-five percent of Baltimore-area buyers got conventional loans last month, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. The share of buyers turning to Uncle Sam - particularly for Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgages - is way up in these post-bubble, post-subprime times.

From starter house to dream house.That's the housing journey that Cathy and Bill Price took recently. The couple, both 33, took advantage of unusually low mortgage rates to trade a 1,200-square-foot townhouse in Arnold for a 2,300-square-foot colonial in the brand new Severna Park community of Jamestown."

A Colonial-style house on a secluded peaceful lot in Baltimore County's Applewood community recently sold for $1,699,000, a full $100,000 more than its asking price. The reasoning on the buyer's part was clear to Ginny Coleman of Krauss Real Property Brokerage, the listing agency. "This is Ruxton," she said, matter-of-factly, identifying a well-kept, wooded neighborhood know for its gracious homes. "The house sold in nine days. " "The Pratt Avenue property was both a very special house and a very special location," noted the buyer's agent, Karen Hubble Bisbee with Coldwell Banker.

AmericanStyle magazine, a quarterly publication catering to consumers and producers of fine crafts, has suspended publication and is seeking a buyer, its Baltimore-based publisher announced this week. The magazine has had trouble maintaining advertising sales, said Jean Thompson, a spokeswoman for the magazine's publisher, The Rosen Group, a marketing firm focused on helping North American artists expand their businesses. Many of the magazine's advertisers are art galleries, Thompson said.