Homes

Rosemary Tanfani sits at retirement's front door with an enviable net worth, but a lush standard of living down the road isn't guaranteed. Much of the single 62-year-old's assets are tied to a weakening California real estate market and in single stocks with mixed track records. Her two single-family-home rental properties need costly improvements and haven't produced much in the way of returns. But the softening housing market and tax consequences of selling have kept Tanfani mired in indecision.

When area Realtors recall 1998, they know it's going to be a tough year to beat.Energized by a December that didn't bother to take time off for the holidays, real estate agents sold more existing homes last year than in any other year in the 1990s, according to preliminary housing statistics released yesterday.According to the Metropolitan Regional Information System -- the multiple listing service used by Realtors -- 28,991 homes were sold in the Baltimore metropolitan area last year, compared with 22,624 in 1997 -- a 28 percent increase.

The Eastport where Jean Herndon grew up was a close-knit community, a place where generations of black and white families lived side-by-side and earned their pay by shucking oysters and pulling crab pots from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.But within the past two decades, this traditionally blue-collar community has become chic to many white, upper-class professionals searching for prime waterfront property near boating and sailing facilities. With a robust economy in place and interest rates at an all-time low, the demand for property in Eastport has soared in the past two years, real estate agents say.People want to move to Eastport so much that Realtors have been trying all sorts of tactics to find sellers.

Homebuyers in April continued to compete for houses on the market, as Baltimore-area sales climbed 7.6 percent and average prices inched up from a year ago.The sales gain, reported yesterday by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., marked the first increase of less than 10 percent in the past year and a half.Strong consumer confidence and low mortgage interest rates have driven home sales to double-digit increases, on a year-over-year basis, since October 1997.Real estate experts yesterday attributed April's smaller, yet still healthy, increase to a siphoning off of the pent-up demand that existed throughout much of last year.

LATEST REAL estate data show a whopping 61 percent increase in the sales of existing city homes over June 1997. Other metropolitan jurisdictions also recorded healthy gains. But Baltimore's figures are particularly dramatic in part because its market had been so soft.Houses are moving briskly in such high-end neighborhoods as Roland Park, Guilford, Homeland and Bolton Hill, where properties often had been priced below replacement cost.The bad news is that "For Sale" signs saturate many less desirable neighborhoods, with hardly any properties changing hands.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Carol Abell and her family joined six other families for their annual block party on Nearbrook Lane in Carney, a community of about 10,000 people outside Interstate 695 in Baltimore County."

A surging real estate and retail market combined with continued job growth has Howard County business and government leaders more optimistic than they've been in years about the local economy.The March issue of "Howard County Economic Indicators" -- a four-page quarterly review of economic data, analysis and hunches -- shows strength throughout most parts of the economy, including banking, personal services, construction and home sales."It's probably the most optimistic report we've put out," said county Budget Administrator Raymond Wacks.

In an unprecedented directive to all city employees, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is ordering them to disclose any real estate interests they have in Baltimore.Expanding his scrutiny far beyond the housing department, Mr. Schmoke is asking all 26,400 government workers, from city lawyers to teachers, secretaries and garbage collectors, to report for the first time any investment properties they own.Mr. Schmoke told his department chiefs this week to survey their employees to find out how many have an interest in commercial or residential holdings besides their own homes.

ESIC of Columbia appoints 4 new officersEnterprise Social Investment Corp., a Columbia-based organization that helps provide affordable housing capital by using the federal low-income housing tax credit, recently appointed four new officers.Chickie Grayson was named president of Enterprise Construction Co., which says it is the nation's largest developer of affordable housing financed through the federal Nehemiah housing program. Grayson joined ESIC in 1987 and has served as vice president of the construction subsidiary.

Realtors in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia are creating what they predict will be the nation's largest, most advanced system of selling and buying homes.Through a new, regional multiple-listing service, real estate agents will have access to homes for sale across county and state lines from Fredericksburg, Va., to the Pennsylvania line.Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. is expected to replace eight local MLS systems with a single source of cutting-edge electronic technology, speeding and simplifying the home-buying process.

Buyers snapped up 10 percent more homes in the Baltimore metro area last month than they did a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2005 and a sign that the long-depressed housing market could finally be turning a corner. July was the second month in a row that home sales rose year-over-year, according to numbers released Monday by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. In June, the increase was 2 percent. The Baltimore-area housing market hasn't seen two back-to-back months of improving sales since the peak of the buying frenzy four years ago. But home sellers eager for values to follow suit could be in for a long wait.

Skittish homebuyers ran up against sellers unwilling to budge on prices in February, keeping the number of homes sold in metropolitan Baltimore at one of its lowest monthly levels this decade, statistics released yesterday show. Fewer than 1,100 homes sold in the Baltimore area last month, a drop of more than 31 percent compared with a year earlier, real estate tracker Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. said. Prices for homes sold fell 6.5 percent to an average $282,034. Buyers worried about job security or waiting for prices to fall even more were reluctant to bid on homes, real estate experts said.

Falling prices keep housing affordable As a real estate agent in Baltimore, I intimately understand the effects of the recession on my business, my clients and the real estate market in our region ("The year of the slump," Jan. 12). And the news isn't great. However, I think some perspective is in order. The 3 percent drop in average home sale price in this area over the last year cited by The Baltimore Sun is nothing compared with what has happened in many other cities. Although some may not want to hear this, I think we in this area ought to consider ourselves lucky.

LOS ANGELES - In Beverly Hills, a 32,000-square-foot beaux-arts mansion that will be sheathed in Portuguese limestone and adorned with gold-plated doorknobs fashioned in France is rising on Sunset Boulevard. A few miles away in Bel-Air, businessman Eri Kroh has requested permits to lop off the top of a hill, fill in a canyon and then, after moving 68,000 cubic yards of dirt, replace the chaparral-covered lot with a 30,000-plus square-foot single-family home with Pacific Ocean views. Just down the hill, workers recently were building retaining walls for a giant lot that real estate experts say could soon feature one or two giant palacelike homes.

Horace L. "Sam" Bass Jr., a residential real estate salesman who enjoyed boating on the Chesapeake Bay, died of cancer Sunday at Genesis Spa Creek Nursing Home. The Annapolis resident was 73. Born in Greenville, N.C., and raised in Clarksburg, W.Va., he was a first lieutenant in the Air Force and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Richmond. He was a 1963 graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law. After moving to Catonsville many years ago, Mr. Bass founded Professional Real Estate and had offices on Frederick Road and Nunnery Lane.

Rosemary Tanfani sits at retirement's front door with an enviable net worth, but a lush standard of living down the road isn't guaranteed. Much of the single 62-year-old's assets are tied to a weakening California real estate market and in single stocks with mixed track records. Her two single-family-home rental properties need costly improvements and haven't produced much in the way of returns. But the softening housing market and tax consequences of selling have kept Tanfani mired in indecision.

Real estate investors, leaping to buy Baltimore homes during the boom, helped fuel the frenzy and drive up prices in neighborhoods from Canton to Reservoir Hill. Now they're part of the fallout. Properties belonging to "nonowner occupiers" - usually investors - accounted for nearly 30 percent of the city homes that lenders were trying to foreclose on during the first three months of the year, according to a Sun analysis of state court and assessment data. Caught by the market slowdown and in some cases blindsided by other problems, they defaulted on loans for more than 250 homes.

Have you ever checked out the satellite photos and market value estimates of homes in your neighborhood on Zillow.com - the Internet real estate site that offers "free, instant valuations and data for 67 million-plus homes"? Zillow was launched with major media fanfare in February, backed with a reported $57 million in venture capital. It is one of the most popular real estate sites on the Web - visited millions of times a month by sellers, buyers, agents, lenders and homeowners. It also has begun distributing its free "Zestimates" through Yahoo.

Seminars offered in real estate Long & Foster Real Estate will offer free seminars to people interested in a career in real estate. Seminars tell how to get started, course requirements, the costs involved in training and the pros and cons of such a career. Registration is required. Finksburg: 7 p.m. Thursday at 2333 Baltimore Blvd., 410-876- 1010. Westminster: 6 p.m. Dec. 15 at 625-P Baltimore Blvd., 410-876- 7100. `Carroll Magazine' celebrates first year Carroll Magazine, a bimonthly publication covering Carroll County's region and lifestyle, celebrates its first anniversary Thursday.

Toll Brothers Inc., a national homebuilder with a substantial presence in Maryland, cut its sales estimate yesterday for the coming fiscal year, noting softening of the market, construction backlogs and an expectation of more-moderate home price increases. It was the latest sign that the housing boom has passed its peak, although experts at two regional forums yesterday said Maryland is better protected from a cooling-off than other areas because of its tight housing supply and the expected arrival of tens of thousands of new defense jobs.