Hello, neighbors, Kathleen, Sandy Waters, and I went on the Mount Vernon Holly Tour on Sunday. I was most impressed with four small houses on Tyson St. near Read. These houses were originally only about 10 feet wide, so people were very clever about how they used space. One house combined two of these little houses, and it was really quite nice. Lots of neat furniture, small well-organized rooms. I learned a new phrase: chimney stair. It's a tiny winding staircase that is so small it fits between the chimney and a wall. There was a gorgeous house on Chase St., the one that has a boutique called Chase Street Accessories on the ground floor, right near the American Inst. of Architects building. It was grand, with a tub, jacuzzi, and sauna on the 4th floor. They cleverly fit the ductwork for central air to pass through the transom windows of the bedrooms on the 4th floor.
--- I was chatting with Matthew Kinkelaar this morning. He owns the Village Properties Group LLC. He told me that he had a couple houses up for auction last week, and he pulled them from the auction because the highest bids didn't meet the minimum he was looking for. He says he is seeing various indications that the market in Charles Village is softening and thinks we're in for a correction of 20 to 25 percent. He thinks investors and banks are losing patience and will soon start to tighten the availability of easy money for mortgages with low downpayments. That seems unlikely to me. I think it's more likely that there will be a gradual levelling off rather than an actual drop. To my mind, a lot of the fundamentals for the hot market are still in place. Washington DC is a driving factor, and as long as housing is scarce there, there's pressure on the Baltimore market. Mortgage rates are climbing, but only slowly. If real estate in Baltimore is overvalued, it's overvalued to a lesser extent than many other markets around the country. This could work to our advantage, because if there's a collapse somewhere else, then real property investors might decide to shift funds to a safer market, like Baltimore. (Unless they abandon real estate altogether...) --Emil -- Emil Volcheck [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://acm.org/~volcheck _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat@charlesvillage.info http://charlesvillage.info/mailman/listinfo/chat_charlesvillage.info
