Nov
28
Driveby Shooting at Mueller Austin Yet Home Prices Are Soaring
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
Mueller Austin: How does a driveby shooting impact sustainable new urban home design and prices?
Well the video below might shed some light. To celebrate the five homes in Mueller being built which will feature in the Austin Homebuilder’s Association 2009 Parade of Homes, I drove past and shot them. With my camera.
This is the first tour of homes which will feature 5 star green homes.The parade is scheduled for May 23rd – June 7th 2009 along Camacho Street. The homes are 3000-4500sqft and are the first in the new urban development priced above $1m. Of the builders:
both Streetman and Muskin have already built and sold homes at Mueller. The five 5 star green homes are opposite the newly opened 30 acre Lake Park, and share the same size 55 foot wide lots as most of the Streetman homes at Mueller.
To date, the most expensive home available at Mueller is at $915,000 – the Streetman model home at the corner of Tom Miller and Antone. (If you bought this you would lease it back to the builder – you could be Bob Brock’s landlord!) The median list price of market rate homes at Mueller is around $371k, and the range of home prices at Mueller is from around $120k – $1m.
In addition to homes to be built in this phase and future phases at Mueller, you can purchase from several of the built homes and still close before the holidays.
Builders will typically discount homes that are built if they are not interested in holding inventory. Given the pressures on the economy and homebuilders, holding inventory is not top of the list of priorities for most builders, so now is a great time to shop for a move-in ready home at Mueller.
For those interested in living at Mueller, the MuellerAustin site has a good but slightly outdated list of floorplans, and the not all homes are entered into the MLS. If you want to get the scoop on what’s built and being built, then get in touch!
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® who lives and works at Mueller. Contact him to learn more about buyer representation at Mueller and beyond.
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Nov
25
Austin Homeselling FAQ – Can I Take My Kitchen Stove With Me?
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
You’ve got an offer on your Central Austin home, and you’re getting ready to move into your new home. What is and isn’t included in the sales contract, and can you take your free-standing range with you to the new place?
The Texas Real Estate Commission’s One To Four Family Residential Contract has specific details as to what is included in the purchase in paragraphs B and C:
“B. IMPROVEMENTS: The house, garage and all other fixtures and improvements attached to the above-described real property, including without limitation, the following permanently installed and built-in items, if any: all equipment and appliances… …kitchen equipment… …and all other property owned by Seller and attached to the above described real property.
C. ACCESSORIES: The following described related accessories, if any: window air conditioning units, stove, …”
So while you might argue that the free-standing stove in your kitchen is not permanently attached to your old home, it is definitely included in the sale in paragraph C. In contrast, your refridgerator is generally not attached to the real property – it is typically on wheels and therefore excluded from the sale unless otherwise noted in the contract.
You can take your fridge but your stove has to stay!
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® in Austin, TX. He specializes in helping people buy and sell Central and East Austin homes. Call 512 694 8873 or contact him if you want a free valuation of your Austin home.
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Nov
24
Energy Efficient Mortgages – The Color Of Money is Green
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
Austin Green Real Estate: How an Energy Efficient Mortgage can help you save money.
Why would you buy an energy efficient home?
Maybe because you realize that an average home is responsible for twice the greenhouse gases that an average car is. You’ve bought your Prius, and you expect your new home to be energy efficient too.
Maybe because you want low utility bills.
Maybe you don’t want to buy a home, maybe you want to add energy efficiency measures to your existing home, and want to refinance your mortgage to pay for them so that you save money on utility bills in the future.
If any of these describe your situation, the Energy Efficient Mortgage is your friend.
Buying a new home with an Energy Efficient Mortgage
When a loan officer determines how much money you can borrow to get a loan on a new home, they evaluate several things – credit score, job history and debt to income ratio. The debt to income ratio is a measure of how much of your income will be used for debt service, i.e. paying back loans including your mortgage. They also estimate how much bills will be to make sure you can afford to pay off the loan and cover regular living expenses.
If you’re buying a net-zero home, like the ones becoming available in SOL Austin, then your bills will be less, and this can be taken into account when you qualify for your loan. You can afford a larger loan payment as your energy bills are lower. Score one for Energy Efficient Mortgages!
Buying and improving an older home with an Energy Efficient Mortgage
The older mid-century ranch you’ve fallen in love with may have dreadful insulation, single pane windows and an 11 SEER HVAC unit but have no fear. If you can show that the home improvements you want to make after buying will raise the home’s efficiency and be cost effective, you can borrow the money to make the improvements in the loan. You can roll the cost of the improvements into your mortgage payment.
Hold on a second. Did I just say roll costs into your loan? Isn’t that a red flag that got us into the economic mess we’re in right now? Not really. The key difference is that these improvements have to be cost effective – the cost of improvements has to be paid back by the savings on energy bills in a certain time.
How do you know how energy efficient a home is?
There’s a Home Energy Rating (HERS) report that an energy auditor can perform on a home you’re thinking of buying. The current rating, predicted future rating and cost of improvements and projected savings are all calculated to figure out which energy efficiency fixes are cost effective.
The great thing is that you can increase the resale value of an older home that you want to live in and decrease the utility bills and get tax credits for rolling certain costs into your loan.
EEM loan products have been around for over 10 years, but there are new items in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act 2008 that promote increasing energy efficiency in homes, so I expect to see a larger uptake and some lower energy bills.
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor in Austin Texas. Contact Garreth to find your next Austin green home, or to find a lender who will help with an Energy Efficient Mortgage.
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Nov
22
Studios Available in East Austin
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
East Austin Studio Tour is this weekend – 150 artists throughout the East side of Austin open the doors to their workshops and galleries. I didn’t make last year’s tour, but I’m super excited about this one – the tour guide for 2008 is packed with intrigue, and here are three of the things that have caught my eye:
- Austin Artistic Reconstruction – 1023 Springdale Road #105 have everything from bellydancing to plans for a 34′ tall functional wooden clock that will be burnt as part of First Night 2009. Oh and cupcakes too!
- Adreon Henry at Super!Alright! 301A Chicon Street – one line drawings and prints
- The Splinter Group at 4709 E. 5th St – Chris Levack is the artist responsible for the giant pollen and wigwam sculptures I see every day at Mueller.
The East Austin area was recently named as a great area to buy by BusinessWeek, which cites the migration of artists to find well priced studios as an indicator of future price increases.
If you’re inspired by the tour to get your own home and studio in East Austin, there are some good choices available right now.
- A home in Cherrywood with a separate studio
- A second home in Cherrrywood with a 1/1 which could double as a studio
- A Central East home in 78702 with a two story garage ideal for a studio
See you out and about at E.A.S.T!
Garreth Wilcock is a part time artist and full time Realtor ® specializing in helping people find homes in Central and East Austin. Search for available homes in East Austin by map at his website.
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Nov
21
Can I Rent A Home At Mueller Austin Today?
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
Mueller Austin: Are there rental homes available today? Yes! There are several options right now at Mueller, in addition to the Mosaic at Mueller apartments which are scheduled for completion in Winter 2009.
The first Mueller Pioneers (Hello Bobby!) closed and occupied their homes in Mueller’s phase I and moved in December 2007, though the majority of pioneers didn’t move in until Spring 2008.
At this time the large number of completed homes and few residents made it seem like the set of a zombie movie. Now that around 300 families have taken residence and the streets have filled up, there are some new opportunities.
- From the initial residential construction, there are currently two homes available for lease in Mueller – one on Scales and one on Littlefield, with monthly leases running below $1.20 / sqft. These single family yard homes have 3 bedrooms and between 1946 and 2530 sqft of living space.
- Rent a carriage house. Several of the Mueller floorplans have an optional carriage unit which can be rented out as an efficiency apartment. Word on the Mueller Community site has it that these apartments rent quickly on craigslist.
- The 430+ planned Mosaic apartments range between 580 and 1750 sqft for 1,2 and 3 bedroom units. The apartments were originally slated for availability late 2008, but the construction has been delayed until 2009.
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® working in and around Mueller Austin. Find out his cost saving representation for Mueller buyers, or search for available homes in Central Austin.
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Nov
20
Mueller and More – One Year Old Today, But What Does the Future Hold?
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
I happened to look back at my first post to this blog – Homes Available Now at Robert Mueller Redevelopment and realized that it was made exactly a year ago today.
Many things have changed in the last year, and I got to reminiscing on what’s been happening in my real estate world since November 20, 2007. Here are twelve things in no particular order that stand out in my mind:
- Villa Muse ended talks with the City of Austin and seeks other locations
- The Travis County foreclosure auction kicked off the year on January 1st 2008
- Austin Mayor Will Wynn announced the Austin Climate Protection Plan
- I moved into my home at Mueller and no zombies came to eat me.
- Bank of America bailed out Countrywide, the US Government bailed out Fanny and Freddie.
- The Housing Stimulus Bill was signed, and “Emergency” and “Foreclosure” and “HUD” became embroiled in every third sentence
- Crestview Station broke ground and is nearing completion.
- Google launched Streetview in Austin, so you can virtually scout out neighborhoods as they were 6 months ago
- Phase II of residential development started at Mueller
- Agave at Nine-Sixty-Nine in East Austin started their Phase II
- The Mueller Affordable program filled and emptied and filled again
- SOL Austin broke ground on it’s 27 SEER HVAC homes
Looking at the year ahead, it’s going to be interesting to see the state of the US economy and of the Austin housing market in a year’s time. Will there be an American auto industry in 2009, and what will mortgage rates do in the next 12 months? If you have any predictions, please comment!
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® in Austin, Texas. You can search for available homes in Central and East Austin at his website.
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Nov
20
Waiting for Affordable Homes at Mueller? Live Up The Street Right Now!
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
In a recent post, I compared the price per square foot of some available homes at Mueller Austin with the surrounding areas that are closer to town, and showed that they were pretty competitive.
I could write for days (and often do) about the existing and coming amenities and employers at Mueller: The Dell Children’s Hospital, Ronald McDonald House, major retail (ok so big box retail isn’t all that exciting) and coming Town Center are some of the reasons that people contact me about buying a home at Mueller Austin.
They’ve read about the bicycle and pedestrian friendly streets, the 140 acres of green space, and the three star plus green homes, and they want to see how much it costs. In addition to market rate homes in the $170k – $1m range, 25% of the homes are destined to be available to participants in the affordability program – which provides homes for income qualified buyers to purchase and rent.
However, the waiting list for affordable homes is variable at best. You’re pretty much at the whim of the builder development and release schedule: when you can apply, what the terms are, and how the process works. If you qualified this year and the waiting list keeps you until next year, does your qualification hold over?
Some people want to buy an affordable home right now, partly because they feel the local market is a buyer’s market, but still want access to all the cool stuff already at Mueller. So I compiled a search for homes that are close to Mueller that are available for less than $150k.
Two of these are my listings but I’m happy to show people all of the above homes, or shepherd you through the affordable program at Mueller.
One of my affordable listings near Mueller is a 2003 build in my old neighborhood of University Hills. The other is an affordable home near Mueller is over in Windsor Park Hills. Both have new flooring and paint and are move-in ready.
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® working in and around Mueller Austin. Find out his cost saving representation for Mueller buyers, or search for available homes in Central and East Austin.
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Nov
19
Can I Afford a Green Home in Central Or East Austin?
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
Austin Texas is becoming one of the greenest cities in the US – ranked second on Earth Day in 2006. But how is Austin green real estate doing, and how affordable are green homes which often have higher construction costs?
The Austin Board of Realtors recently added the ability to the MLS to record ratings in a number of different green building programs – Austin Energy Green Building Program, LEED-H, National Association of Home Builders, Environments For Living, Energy Star Homes, and the mysterious catch-all “See Agent”. This allows agents and buyers to search for Austin homes with a bone fide green rating. More and more buyers are asking for green homes, with sustainable building and lower energy costs at the forefront of requests.
I took a look to see how many available homes were marked as green rated in Central and East Austin at present.
The limitations of this exercise are that not all new homes are in the MLS, and not all agents are using the field.
For example, all residential development at Mueller has to be at least 3 star rated in the Austin Energy Green Building Program. Of 33 currently active listings at Mueller, only 25 are marked as green rated. So not all agents are taking full advantage of the MLS, which is a major shortcoming when marketing homes in a green development in my opinion.
As shown in the graph above, there are no homes under $150k listed as green rated. The highest proportion of green homes are in the $300k-$400k, and $600k-$700k ranges.
So what does that mean for affordable green homes? The median listing price in the area is around $325k, and green homes are well-represented here. Overall, 6% of listings are marked as green rated.
Only 1% of homes in Central and East Austin under $200k are green rated in the MLS. There certainly are green homes being built for affordable (income certified) programs – for example 8 out of 40 at SOL Austin and 25% of homes at Mueller, Austin. But by and large the greener homes are at the middle of the market and beyond.
Garreth Wilcock is a real estate agent in Austin, TX. He specializes in Central and East Austin Green Real Estate, and he lives and works in Mueller.
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Nov
18
Moving Homes – Fear of Homelessness For First Time Home Sellers
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
If you’ve never sold a home and bought a new home, you might be wondering how to schedule the closings. You don’t want to own two homes while you move all of your belongings, and you don’t want to put all of your possessions in storage between the sale of one home and the purchase of another.
One solution is to sell your home and lease it back from the buyer for a few days. That way you can sell your home, but maintain occupancy as a tenant. Then you can purchase your new home, and move at your leisure.
There’s a simple seller’s temporary residential lease form from the Texas Real Estate Commission which covers this situation. As part of the purchase contract, the buyer for your old home agrees to be your landlord for a certain time at a certain cost per day and with a specified deposit. Then after closing and funding on your home sale, you are bound by the terms of this simple lease, giving you time to move out.
This avoids having to carry two mortgages for a period of time and avoids the need for a bridge loan. And it can also decouple the closings – this can reduce stress if one closing is delayed.
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® in Austin, TX. He specializes in helping people find Central and East Austin homes. Call 512 694 8873 or contact him if you want a free valuation of your Austin home.
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Nov
17
SOL Austin Homes – 27 SEER HVAC – Yes Twenty Seven
Posted by garreth under Uncategorized
Solutions Oriented Living – the new development near 183 and Bolm is working on its geo-thermal HVAC for homes available in 2009. Rather than worry about energy bills in the peak temperatures of summer, SOL Austin residents will enjoy homes with a staggering 27 SEER rating. The homes will meet the Austin Climate Protection Plan’s aim of net-zero capable single family homes.
What on earth is a SEER rating? Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio is a measure from some bods at the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute on how much energy an AC unit uses to cool your home. New whole home units manufactured for use in the US must be rated at 13 SEER or higher, or 14 SEER for Energy Star units. Bigger SEER ratings mean lower utility bills.
So how much better is 27 SEER than 13 SEER? A 27 SEER unit will use (1 – 13/27) = 52% less energy. That’s if the unit is placed in a comparable home, but the SOL homes are designed holistically with their net-zero aim in mind. SOL homes feature window on the North and South faces rather than on the East and West reduces solar heat gain, and improved insulation against heat loss or gain.
How do SOL Austin homes achieve 27 SEER? The homes use geo-thermal HVAC with two stage compressors. The ground maintains a constant temperature, and can be used to heat or call liquids passed through.
So are my utliity bills 50% less at SOL? Although the HVAC unit is extremely efficient, the goal of the community is to have a zero-net energy consumption over the year. The required energy will be generated via solar panels on each home.
There are 16 affordable homes at SOL Austin available for income qualified applicants, and 24 market rate homes, varying in size from 930 to 1850sqft. Prices for market rate homes are around $200/sqft, and construction is set to complete in Spring 2009.
SOL floorplans are available online, and there are more specific details available at this list of SOL Austin homes.
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor ® who can help you purchase your home at SOL Austin. He specializes in helping people find Central East Austin real estate.
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