Encompass Realty recently went to http://www.myconsultant.com and we found it to be interesting. MyConsultant.com prescreens licensed professionals for the end user. It looks like MyConsultant.com has about three (3) licensed people per industry for each city in the US. MyConsultant.com targets individuals interested in finding good people : a real estate agent, a real estate loan officer, insurance agent,a Search Engine Optimization consultant, and a web designer(s)…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kAJhJbMw2Y
a video of theirs

visit http://www.myconsultant.com , we even found their video on various popular sites.

Interested to see what you think…

Americans are increasingly nervous about the real estate market in 2007. They have good reason to be. But the news isn’t all bad: Interest rates will remain at historically low levels, homebuyers will see more opportunities, and, best of all, for those planning for the long term, 2009 could be primed for a comeback.

To gauge what the next 12 months might look like, though, BusinessWeek.com asked economists at leading real estate research firms to provide their outlooks for the housing market in 2007. The less-than-festive consensus: Home prices will continue to fall in some markets, and the rate of price appreciation will slow in most places. Declines in homes sales, which directly influence price trends, will set the stage for another year of price decreases in 2008. Foreclosures will continue to increase. For those struggling to hold onto their homes, their net worth will shrink as these homes lose value. Long-term mortgage rates will rise. Housing starts will see double-digit depreciation, the sharpest decline since 1991, the worst year for housing starts on record.

Grim as that might sound, there are some bright spots. Nationwide, home prices will be flat to up slightly in 2007, with many large markets seeing small increases. While new home sales will be down for the year, existing home sales will also be flat. And housing starts won’t see as sharp a decline as they did in the early ’90s or early ’80s.

Self-cleaning market

Another reason for optimism (keeping in mind that expectations are somewhat lower this year): For many, the ongoing market correction will make the dream of buying a home a reality.

“In so many of these markets, housing became extremely unaffordable,” says David Stiff, chief economist at financial data processor Fiserv Lending Solutions, who expects average U.S. home prices to appreciate only 0.1% overall in 2007. “Prices moving back in line with household income sets the stage for price appreciation in the future.”

Blame the rapid run-up in prices on speculation. Taking advantage of low interest rates and good economic conditions, investors drove prices to new heights in the first half of the decade, so they could flip purchases for profit. Some markets saw price appreciation rates of as much as 50%, versus the average annual rate of about 10%.

But as interest rates rose and the gap between income and housing costs widened, homebuyers never materialized as expected. Investors have now been forced to dump their property on the market, flooding many places with homes for sale and forcing prices to a more realistic level

Time lag

“The market was in a frenzy in 2005,” says Lawrence Yun, senior economist at the National Association of Realtors (NAR). “The current transition is just cleansing away the speculators.” Yun expects existing home sales to slip just 0.6% in 2007, with a pickup in the fourth quarter continuing into 2008.

Home price trends tend to lag nine to 12 months behind sales trends, according to Stiff, who predicts prices will be weakest in 2008 and rebound in 2009.

The researchers at Fiserv arrive at their price forecasts by first estimating what home prices would be if housing supply and demand were in balance – that is, if price levels were consistent with local demographic trends and household income levels. They then look at the difference between the estimated “equilibrium” price and the actual price level. If prices are too high relative to the affordable equilibrium level, the forecast is weaker price appreciation. If prices are much higher than equilibrium, the model forecasts price declines.

Construction diet

This explains why former red-hot markets like Southern California, Florida and Las Vegas, which saw the most rapid run-up in prices between 2001 and 2005, will see the sharpest declines in prices in 2007, according to home price index data from Fiserv and Moody’s. The Miami area, with an estimated decline of 9.16%, will have the second-worst 2007 price drop out of all the country’s metro areas. Las Vegas comes in third-worst overall, with a 9.15% forecast decline, and Los Angeles, with a 7.1% decline, isn’t too far behind.

Texas didn’t experience dramatic price appreciation until more recently. Consequently, the Dallas and Houston metro areas are expected to have 2007 price increases of 4% and 3.3%, respectively.

Since trends in housing starts echo price movement, it goes without saying that new home construction is headed for a major slump in 2007. Nationally, total housing starts will slide 13.2% to 1.576 million, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) in Washington, D.C. The last time the nation saw a downturn of this magnitude was in 1991, when starts dropped 15% year-over-year.

“It isn’t as bad, but it’s a very big decline, and one of the big reasons is because of all the investors and speculators,” says Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of research at the NAHB. In the fourth quarter, the seasonally adjusted annual rate will pick up to 1.635 million. At this point, the surplus in inventory will be gone, and prices will start to stabilize, Ahluwalia adds.

Looking for value

As with prices and sales, trends in new home construction can vary dramatically from market to market. Housing starts in the Detroit area will be among the lowest in the country in 2007, plummeting 18.3% due to continuing economic woes. Interestingly, prices will not decline, but this is largely because they cannot go any lower (Read more about Detroit’s market in “The foreclosure capital of the U.S."). Seattle is the only area that will see a rise (4.7%) in housing starts, primarily because of a strong job market with companies like Microsoft and Boeing based in the area.

Ironically, even record-low new home construction numbers can be interpreted as good news for the overall housing market. With fewer homes being built, the market will be forced to absorb its current oversupply, bringing about the supply-demand balance that, once again, leads to more realistic prices. (Read more in “How buyers could save the housing market.” )

“It’s important to note that the value of homes isn’t dropping,” says Santo Rizzo, chief executive officer of Rizzo Realty Group, a national real estate investment firm in Chicago.

The normalizing market is causing “unnecessary fear” and creating a favorable market for real estate investors, says Rizzo, who recommends investing for the long term in 2007 “losers” Orlando, Fla., Phoenix and Las Vegas for their stable economies, high resale marketability, vacation market statuses, low vacancy rates and favorable price-to-income ratios.

Brighter tomorrows?

Interest rates are, of course, the wild card here. The Mortgage Bankers Association of America expects the Federal Funds Rate – the interest rate on overnight loans between banks – to remain at 5.3% throughout 2007, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbing to 6.6%, from 6%, and the one-year adjustable mortgage rate average staying about the same at 5.8%. According to the NAR, the Fed Funds Rate will fall to 4.8% by the end of 2007, the 30-year fixed rate will hit 6.7%, and the one-year adjustable rate will decline to 5.5%.

But no matter how you spin it, interest and mortgage rates are and will remain at historically low levels. The rest of the economy isn’t in terrible shape, either – the unemployment rate hovers around a relatively low 5%, and the stock market is in the midst of an encouraging rally.

“The law of supply and demand, more than anything, is going to be the driving force that keeps the market relatively ‘flat,’ throughout the year,” says Rizzo. “Since we expect the economy to continue to improve, rents to continue to rise, interest rates to remain relatively low and investor supplies to be absorbed, the 2007 ‘flat’ market will set the stage for brighter predictions in 2008.”

So while 2007 won’t be an outstanding year for real estate, it’s unlikely to go down in history as one of the worst. At the very least, it will create an investment opportunity – and a great lesson in basic economics. Business Week

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With more and more people working at home at least part of the week, it’s perhaps not surprising that condo developers around the country are beginning to promote live-work units as part of their mix of offerings. Though the concept harks back to days when the corner grocer lived in rooms above the store, the design usually owes more to the artist’s loft that has proliferated over the past few decades in renovated commercial buildings found in resurrected downtowns.

In addition to sculptors and painters, these modern, at-home work spaces target professionals and entrepreneurs. While they may appear to be a good solution to such urban problems as sprawl, traffic congestion, rising fuel costs, parking and the mounting price of leased office space, the newness of the concept can present a number of challenges to consumers and developers.

Some developers could find their projects delayed because building codes in most municipalities don’t yet have provisions for these residential-commercial hybrids. The type of work the unit owner can engage in will likely come under municipal examination, community scrutiny or both. And some critics question whether the cost of the average live-work unit puts it beyond the economic reach of most young professionals.

Demand for live-work space grows

“Live-work condos are a niche market, but they are, in certain circumstances, attractive to some people,” says John McIlwain, senior resident fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. “Sometimes people use them for an office or a store, sometimes just as extra space they can use or rent out for income.”

There’s no doubt that working at home is a growing trend. In 2000, U.S. census found nearly 4.2 million people age 16 or older worked at home most days during the week, up from 3.4 million in 1990. That 23.5% increase over 10 years almost doubled the growth rate of the overall work force. The Census Bureau’s most recent estimate, made from community surveys conducted in 2003, raised the number of home-based workers to 4.5 million – an increase of slightly more than 7% in only three years.

Multiple design features

There’s no single definition of what constitutes a live-work unit.

“In some cases, they simply have an extra room that can be used as an office or a bedroom,” says McIlwain. “In some cases, there’s real showroom space with an apartment upstairs. Sometimes it’s more of a loft-style apartment. So they vary.”

The Metropolitan, a condo project under construction by Hoyt Street Properties in downtown Portland, Ore., offers prospective buyers a range of possible floor plans to help them visualize possible uses, says Marilyn Andersen, Hoyt Realty Group’s principal broker. Those uses range from a contemporary office with several workstations to a small office within a home.

“While most live-work units require some retrofitting to make them business-ready,” Andersen says, “ours are designed as office suites built for immediate business occupancy.”

Kubik, a two-tower condo project under construction in Miami, will include adaptable-spaced, bi-level units called LOTS, or living over the studio, units.

“To access your studio or office, you have to go out on the terrace, then down a spiral staircase to the work space,” says Camilo Alvarado Boshell, Kubik’s architect and developer.

In addition, Boshell says, Kubik’s townhomes offer professionals, such as attorneys or writers, the opportunity to have offices with separate entrances on the street and their living quarters above.

These designs are Boshell’s solutions to city of Miami zoning codes, which, to date, make no provision for apartments with both commercial and residential uses.

The interior space is adaptable, Boshell says, because “it adapts to your needs. We have movable wall panels that allow people to create their own space configurations, so that each unit is unique.”

Kolter City Plaza in West Palm Beach, Fla., an area where zoning is more amenable to live-work buildings, offers upstairs living and downstairs work units connected by an internal staircase, says real-estate attorney Cynthia Spall of Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, which represents the developer.

A similar layout will be used for live-work units at The Lofts at Hollywood Station in Hollywood, Fla. Developer Richard Lamondin says the project’s five floor plans all feature separate work areas and private quarters.

“They are accessible from the street level and the garage, making it easy for both residents and guests to come and go,” Lamondin says. “Artists and photographers requiring studio space, salespeople and home-business owners who need a combination of work and living space, are prime candidates for this kind of residence.”

Zoning, building code challenges

Code problems arise because the live-work concept usually falls between the cracks, says H. William Freeman, a principal with Freeman, Cotton & Norris in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. As a real-estate attorney, Freeman says he has handled a half-dozen live-work condos in the metropolitan Detroit area.

“Communities don’t know whether to treat them as commercial or residential,” Freeman says. “And that presents problems because of the stricter commercial codes for things such as fire protection and sewer capacity, the need for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and so on.”

Boshell’s solution of having work and living space under one roof, but not interconnected, gets around zoning and code issues, says David Dabby, a real-estate consultant in Coral Gables, Fla., because “people are more accustomed to that idea. The zoning and building codes can embrace it as long as the area is zoned for both commercial and residential use. It’s when you get into a single live-work condo unit that you’re going to run into problems – not because the municipality doesn’t like the idea, but simply because there’s no precedent for it in the codes.”

A related problem that comes up often, Freeman says, is that “people don’t always live in the living space and work in the work space, so things can get kind of mixed up. Condo communities don’t like that. They want working going on only in the work space.”

Because of these difficulties, live-work units are most frequently found in master-planned, New Urbanist-style developments, McIlwain says, “where the idea is to try to combine uses, harking back to the old days – or at least what we imagine the old days were like.”

Restrictions on work space uses

For the unit owner, attorney Spall says, “The threshold zoning issue is that clearly only certain uses are going to be allowed in an area that also allows residential use. Buyers need to understand what uses they can and can’t have.”

These uses are generally spelled out in condo association documents – or sometimes by the municipality. Portland’s Andersen envisions the range in occupations by residents at the Metropolitan as “attorneys to artists, counselors to massage therapists.”

At Kolter City Plaza, says Spall, “some uses are preapproved, a second set has yet to be approved by the condo association and a third set is for uses barred under any circumstances – medical, for example, or an adult bookstore.”

Another caveat for buyers of dual-use condominiums, Spall says, is to make sure the condo documents protect the rights of the unit owner.

“Generally there are fewer of these units than there are strictly residential units within the project,” she says. “You need to look very carefully at the governing documents to make sure that any amendments to them that would affect your rights would have to be approved by the majority of the live-work unit owners, so your rights don’t get trampled on by the majority. For example, make sure that you have the right for perpetuity to do the kind of work you thought you could do when you bought the unit.”

Price-prohibitive properties

Can the young professionals, often cited as the likely target market for live-work condos, afford to purchase them? A study of affordability prepared by The Live/Work Institute, a nonprofit organization in Oakland, Calif., founded by architect Thomas Dolan, says the idea is that the owner of such a unit saves money by not paying separate rents for living space and work space, as well as reducing transportation costs.

For instance, the report estimates that couples who can get by with one car instead of two are saving approximately $500 a month in costs related to maintenance, gas, insurance, etc.

That formula may hold true for units in converted properties, but the institute’s researchers found that the math doesn’t always work with new construction.

“As live-work has moved into the mainstream and becomes an accepted real estate product, prices for such units have gone up, often astronomically, and the likelihood of finding an affordable live-work space has decreased,” the report says.

Live-work lofts at Hollywood Station begin in the $400,000s. The units in Portland’s Metropolitan are being marketed from the low $500,000s to the low $600,000s. At Miami’s Kubik, they run from the $400,000s to $2.5 million.

For the developer, Freeman points out, price is not a problem. If units within a project are marketed as live-work but don’t sell, they can eventually be converted to conventional units.

“There is nothing about the type of unit itself that is more costly,” he says, adding that location, as always in real estate, is important.

“It has to be in a walking district,” Freeman says, “because if part of the savings comes from not having a car, people need to be able to walk to whatever retail needs they have.”

But if they’re affordable and well-situated, condo units custom-designed for at-home workers should thrive, say most experts.Marilyn Bowden

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