This story came out a few months ago, but I just read about it today. A company in the depressed town of Stockton, California is keeping busy painting the dead lawns of foreclosed homes with green paint so banks can tart them up for auction.

Nick Terlouw has launched the Greener Grass Co., which amounts to a service in which he sprays dead lawns with a deep green, water-based dye that makes the turf look good enough for a golf course or a professional football stadium.

For between $175 and $225 per yard, Terlouw uses a motor-powered 50-gallon insecticide sprayer designed for treating orchard trees. He waves his magic wand and in broad sweeps, a la painting a house, makes tired, if not expired, turf sit up and sparkle like Shirley Temple.

Always Green Turf Painting

This just received from a loan officer at Washington Mutual:

Dear Clients and Colleagues,

The acquisition of WaMu by JPMorgan/Chase strengthens our commercial real estate lending program and provides stability in an environment of change. Please be assured that we will fund our loans as expected, and we look forward to taking new applications from you.

As JPMorgan/Chase, we offer real estate loans for stabilized office, retail, industrial, and apartment buildings as WaMu has always done. In addition, you can expect a significant expansion of our product lines. Watch for these new services in 2009-2010:

Residential Development (single-family lots, homes and condominiums)
Hotel Financing
Senior Housing
Construction, Bridge, and mini-perm loans for development and lease-up
Real Estate Banking for large transactions of $10-$100million

While change is difficult, this move places us in the top position to deliver new products and our usual great service.

Please consider me for your next deal. We look forward to working with you.

Yours Truly,

Exxx J. Mxxxx

Senior Loan Consultant
Washington Mutual Bank
WaMu Head Office - WMC 3801
1301 2nd Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101

A discussion at the Seattle P.I. on whether or not the government should restructure sub-prime loans morphed into a conversation as to whether real estate agents and others “responsible” for the monetary crisis should be taxed to compensate those who’ve lost money in buying or selling a home. One reader proposes a $500 federal excise tax on all real estate transactions until the debts are settled. Hilarity ensues.

How can anyone live like this?

Wall Street was shaken to its foundations in the most harrowing and volatile week in modern history, as a widening crisis of confidence led to the demise of the 158-year-old Lehman Brothers, a government takeover of American International Group , a shotgun marriage of Merrill Lynch with Bank of America , and the merging of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley into banks.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Watch closely how Wall Street insiders console each other.

An earthquake devastated the Sicilian village of Salemi in 1968, killing 200 people and reducing thousands of buildings to rubble. Down the hill, a modern city sprung up in the village’s place, but the historical center has been a ghost town ever since. Except for a few dozen habitable villas, the ruins are frozen in time: tattered curtains hang on broken windows and rusty table legs protrude from heaps of rubble.

Now Salemi is taking an unusual step to reincarnate the old town: it is giving the dilapidated villas away. The city’s new mayor is offering 3,000 of the villas for the bargain-basement price of €1 a piece. The catch? The new owners have two years to renovate, staying true to each building’s original characteristics and, when possible, using the area’s local artisans, masons and builders.

Villa For Sale: Two Bucks

I am RICH and I want to spend it on YOU tonight.

I’ve been told that a link to this website and a copy of the lawsuit is being sent to Sellers around the Seattle area.

A woman in Sheboygan, WI is suing the city because the city’s attorney used legal threats to get her to remove a link to the local police department website — the city apparently believes you need permission to communicate the URLs of its pages:

The city went further, the lawsuit claims, launching a criminal investigation of Reisinger for linking to the department on one of her sites.

Many agents offer community links for home shoppers, including links to their local police departments, city offices and neighborhood resources.

Sheboygan women files landmark case over Web links

—– Original Message —–
From: Elizabeth Govea
To: Marlow@SeattleDreamHomes.com
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 4:10 PM
Subject: Searching for the perfect eco-home

Hi Marlow,

As you no doubt already know, green real estate is getting lots of buzz, and homebuyers in Seattle are leading the charge in eco-home and eco-luxury search. I wanted to make sure you’ve heard about real estate search site Roost.com and what they’re doing to help homebuyers in Seattle and across the country locate sustainable residential real estate. Here are more details:

According to the National Association of Realtors and the US Green Building Council, more and more homebuyers are looking for ways to increase their green footprint. Using innovative and blazing fast search filters, homebuyers are searching on Roost for keywords including “eco,” “solar” and “energy-efficient” to track down the home that will fit their eco-lifestyle. Homebuyers can search on Roost.com for homes with amenities like Gammpar floors, LEED-certified building materials, double-paned windows and even docking stations for electric cars! In Seattle, homes boast features like rainwater harvesting, passive air ventilation, reclaimed fixtures and recycled content tile and flooring.

I would love to put you in touch with Roost CMO Drew Izzo, who can speak with you more about eco-search trends, as well as EcoBrokers from Intero Real Estate Services and EcoBroker International to explain more about the trend and offer more context on green real estate. Thank you in advance for your time, and I look forward to speaking with you.

Thanks,

Elizabeth

______________________

Elizabeth Govea

Direct: 415-694-6718

egovea@racepointgroup.com

Racepoint Group

United Nations Grand Award for Excellence in Communications 2008

PRSA Silver Anvil Winner 2008

Tired of gloom and doom stories about the US real estate market? We are, too. Check out
Happy Real Estate News via Curbed.

Does your home make you happy? Alain de Botton can tell you why with his book The Architecture of Happiness. This book about architecture and design of your home “examines the ways architecture speaks to us, evoking associations that, if we are alive to them, can put us in touch with our true selves and influence how we conduct our lives… The author suggests some of the virtues a building should have (illustrated by pictures on almost every spread): order combined with complexity; balance between contrasting elements; elegance that appears effortless; a coherent relationship among the parts; and self-knowledge, which entails an understanding of human psychology, something that architects all too often overlook.” More than just an exercise in philosophy, the book includes examples of the happy and not-so-happy, “of buildings that either incorporate or ignore these qualities, discussing them in ways that make obvious their virtues or failings.

Architecture of Happiness

New Ways to Get Rich and Happy

I’m table captain for a fundraising luncheon 9/18 at the Rainier Club for History Link and you’re invited.

Gathered will be a motley assortment of local authors, writers, historians, politicians and others interested in local history and current events, who’re dedicated to supporting the work of History Link, the first and largest encyclopedia of community history created expressly for the Internet. It is and continues to be an evolving online encyclopedia of state and local history in Washington state and a great resource for all of us interested in local history.

This month is the 10th anniversary of History Link and the one-year anniversary of the death of the founder, Walt Crowley. It’s fitting that we should have it at the Rainier Club as Walt wrote a 100-year history of the club before his death. Keynote speaker at the luncheon will be author Timothy Egan who worked for 18 years as a writer for The New York Times, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, then as a national enterprise reporter.

In 2006, Mr. Egan won the National Book Award, considered the nation’s highest literary honor, for his history of people who lived through the “Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time”. The book also became a New York Times Bestseller.

In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of reporters who wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America”. He has done special projects on the West and the decline of rural America, and he has followed the entire length of the Lewis and Clark Trail.

Mr. Egan is the author of five books, including “The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest,” and “Lasso the Wind, Away to the New West.”

If you’d like to come, let me know and you can make your donation directly to History Link or I will send you a Paypal invoice. $500 oughta do it. Or more. It’s tax-deductable. The event begins at noon and you can contact me directly at Marlow@SeattleDreamHomes.com for more details.

The brokerage findwell, in a press release issued today, appears to be setting themselves up as a alternative to Redfin, refunding 50% of the commission to a home buyer.

In their press release, they claim $6.6 million in closed sales in the first quarter of operations, however, I’m finding only $5.4M in all of 2008.

Setting yourself up as a discount broker and then naming your competition seems like a bad idea.

From Notorious R.O.B (via 4realz.net/hotlist)

Offering items at a sale price is a very tempting tactic. In the short term, it drives traffic and sales. What you lose in margin is made up in volume. Problem solved, right?!

Bigger problem, created. What you’re really doing is eroding your long-term margins and your long-term sales. (This is especially true if you run a business based on quality and value versus being a low-price provider.)

According to their press release, they’re driving customers around in a “findwell MINI” - a green MINI Cooper marked with the findwell logo and printed with the phrase “Full Service. Mini Commissions.”

Didn’t Foxton’s US have Mini Cooper’s before they went bankrupt?

Foxton’s UK has just called in the investment bank NM Rothschild to save it only a year after it was bought by the private-equity group BC Partners.

Findwell takes on Redfin in real estate

A new home was found for the S&M dungeon house, and it was moved early yesterday morning a few blocks to its new home in Fremont.

Via Seattle MetBlogs

Via Spencer Rascoff on The Examiner. Be sure to check your volume.