KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Wednesday December 15 Housing and Economic stories

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TOP STORIES:

Sheryl Crow Hit by Real Estate Crash; House Auctioned - (www.theimproper.com) Another liberal celebrity environmentalist (her causes include Stop Global Warming, Green Music Group, Healthy Child Healthy World, HELP USA, Live Earth) who lectures others on going green but herself has way more house than she needs with 150 acres, 10,000 square foot (3 times the normal house). Singer Sheryl Crow has become the latest celebrity to get caught in the real estate crash. She can’t sell her sprawling Nashville mansion, so she has gone to the extreme — putting it up for auction at a bargain basement price. Like so many stars who made it big, Crow splurged on huge house with top of the line features. But since the real estate market crash, they have become white elephants. Now Crow’s house is bargain priced. The bidding has topped out at $1.1 million with the online auction set to end tomorrow night (Nov. 24). Crow, 48, likely paid $4 million to $6 million for the house in 2006 after renting it for a few years. Initially. she put it on the market in May for $7.5 million. But no takers stepped up. The sprawling three-story five bedroom house is nestled on 150 acres and is over 10,000-square-feet in size. That’s about three times the normal suburban house. It has a fourteen stall barn and indoor riding arena and you’ll never have to want for a bathroom. It has seven full baths and one half-bath, in addition to a nanny’s quarters and six-car garage.

Foreclosure "robo-signing" scandal impact: Sales dry up - (money.cnn.com) Big banks are having trouble restarting the foreclosure process after this fall's "robo-signing" scandal, and the once booming market for foreclosed homes has been hit hard as a result. According to ForeclosureRadar, the number of properties coming to auction in hard-hit western states -- Arizona, California and Nevada -- has dropped more than 30%. In San Diego, according to broker Scott Cheng of Cheng Realty, who puts investors together with foreclosed properties, the number of auctions scheduled has fallen from 500 a day, to 300. "That part of my business has dried up," Cheng said. "A lot of my investors have stopped looking." Cheng used to be able to find about three or four suitable homes a month for investors looking for a bargain. Now, he hasn't done one of these deals since August.

Dykstra house is sold at auction - (www.vcstar.com) Former baseball star Lenny Dykstra has lost the Lake Sherwood house that was originally built for hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and is one of the Conejo Valley’s most expensive properties. Dykstra took out more than $18 million in loans to purchase the property and on Wednesday it was auctioned for $760,712. “I have no idea about it,” Dykstra said Saturday. “I can’t comment on something I know nothing about.” The winning bidder was the Oregon-based private equity firm Index Investors, a junior lienholder. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. holds the senior lien that’s about $13.5 million, said Jeff Smith, a managing member with Index. Index is negotiating with J.P. Morgan to deal with that debt. Smith said he was the lone bidder at the Ventura County courthouse last week. “Everybody probably didn’t want to come, knowing there was a senior mortgage of $13.5 million,” he said.

Bank of Spain Calls on Country's Lenders to Disclose Real-Estate Holdings - (www.bloomberg.com) The Bank of Spain called on the country’s banks to make an “extra effort” to disclose their real estate holdings amid concern the country may also need to be bailed out after Ireland accepted a financial rescue. Lenders will have to give more information about risks linked to property and real estate, with details of guarantees and reserves set aside to cover them, by March 2011, Deputy GovernorJavier Ariztegui said today in a speech in Barcelona. He also told banks to cut their costs in a “rapid and decided manner” and complete the mergers that will reduce the number of savings-bank groups by almost two-thirds.

“Spain and the Spanish banking system need our creditors to renew the financing they’ve granted us,” he said, saying there was “no room” for delaying the restructuring under way in the industry. “The best way to achieve it is to show daily that the banks and savings banks are healthy and profitable.” Contagion from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis is spreading to Spain and Portugal as Irish officials race to complete a deal for an international aid package before financial markets reopen next week. All of Ireland’s banks passed European regulators’ stress tests in July, while five Spanish savings banks failed the exercise.

Foreclosure Comes to East Lake Shore Drive - (www.chicagomag.com) List Price: $2,195,000. Sale Price: $1,900,000. The Property: The first modern-day foreclosure on tony East Lake Shore Drive is a three-bedroom condo with a large terrace in the Mayfair that sold November 17th. The eight-room condo, at 189 East Lake Shore Drive, has three full and one partial bathrooms, a recently renovated kitchen with premium-brand appliances and a large granite-topped island, and a 456-square-foot living room. “The home was flooded with light from three exposures,” says Sophia Worden, the Prudential Rubloff agent who sold the 3,800-square-foot condo for the foreclosing lender. She described the master bedroom as “palatial.” The terrace, facing south toward Walton Street, is about 600 square feet. The home was in “pristine condition,” Worden says, “not your typical foreclosure that was neglected for a while.”