By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: March 7, 2008: 12:23 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Mortgage costs just got cheaper for buyers in high-cost areas.

The size of loans that can be guaranteed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was raised today by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. The new, higher loan limits will stay in effect through the end of the year, allowing the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), to buy much higher-priced mortgages in some areas of the country.

Also today, the size of the loans that the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) can insure was raised by Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Both moves will lower borrowing costs for buyers of higher priced homes, and aim to boost flagging real estate markets.

Best time to buy a home in four years

Previously, Fannie and Freddie could only insure mortgages of up to $417,000, called conforming loans. That meant, assuming a 20% down payment, that only buyers of homes costing $521,500 or less were eligible for mortgages with GSE backing.

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Tags: FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GSEs, HUD, buyers, economy, financing, foreclosure, investing, lending, loans, mortgages, real estate, real estate outlook, when to buy, where to buy by Aria
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 2:52 PM CDT

The San Antonio-based developer is building the 276-unit Residences at Oak Hill on a 45-acre tract west of the intersection of State Highway 71 and U.S. Highway 290 in Southwest Austin.

Dustin Slack, vice president of multifamily development for McShane, says that with single-family home prices in Southwest Austin pushing the limits of affordability, there’s an opportunity for new luxury rental communities that appeal to the area’s growing high-tech workforce.

“There is an enormous demand for luxury rental communities due to the recent completion of the corporate headquarters for AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc.) together with over 1 million square feet of new corporate campus office space in the immediate area,” says Slack. He also points out that the project is positioned near Sunset Valley to the east and the Hill Country Galleria to the west.

The garden-style rental community will feature a combination of one-, two- and three-bedroom units ranging in size from 600 square feet to 1,300 square feet.

Slack expects the first units to be available in January 2009.

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For more information about this or any Austin real estate project, email me.

Tags: austin, austin real estate, building, condos, economy, investing, neighborhoods, real estate, real estate outlook, where to buy by Aria
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Home values have declined across the country, giving homebuyers the best buys they’ve had since 2004.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It may be the best time to buy a house in more than four years.

Home prices have dropped so quickly and so far that valuations - the difference between what a home should cost and its actual price - are the lowest they’ve been since 2004, according to a report.

The Cleveland-based bank National City Corp. (NCC, Fortune 500), together with financial analysis firm Global Insight, revealed Tuesday that more than 88% of the 330 housing markets surveyed showed price declines and improved affordability during the last three months of 2007.

“Housing valuations are almost back to long-term norms,” said National City’s chief economist, Richard DeKaser. He called current affordability “the best in the past four years.”

But DeKaser cautioned that home prices could fall even further.

“This isn’t to say home price declines are over,” he said. “We could move below historic norms. By the end of 2008, housing markets could be broadly under valued.”

Prices still improving

There are still 21 housing markets, or 6% of those surveyed, that are severely over valued, including Atlantic City and Madera, Calif. That’s down from 56 overvalued markets at the peak of the housing bubble in 2006.

The report compares actual median home prices with what the authors determine are proper home values based on population density, relative income levels and interest rates, as well as historically observed market premiums or discounts, to determine whether markets are over or under valued.

The report also factors in market intangibles that make some areas more desirable places to live, and more expensive.

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Tags: austin, austin real estate, buyers, economy, financing, investing, money, neighborhoods, real estate, real estate outlook, sellers, where to buy by Aria
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Brian Wingfield and William Pentland 01.30.08, 2:20 PM ET

It’s no secret that the Southeast and Western United States are booming. The costs of living and doing business there are often cheaper there than in big coastal cities. But where and how much those cities are thriving might surprise you.

Take Alabama. The state has some of the fastest growing metro areas in the country, including Mobile, which is projected to have the greatest change in “gross metropolitan product (GMP),” 34% between 2007-2012, according to research forecasts done for us by Moody’s Economy.com.

In Pictures: America’s Fastest-Growing Large And Small Metros

One boon to Alabama is ThyssenKrupp’s announcement last year to build a $3.7 billion steel plant in Mobile. And Huntsville–expected GMP growth 15% by 2012–has long been a hub for defense and space research. Since the mid-1990s, Alabama has also become a manufacturing center for automakers like DaimlerChrysler (nyse: DCX - news - people ), Toyota (nyse: TM - news - people ) and Hyundai.

“The automotive industry has been Alabama’s real growth industry in the last 15 years,” says Brian Hilson, president and CEO of Huntsville’s chamber of commerce.

Other metro areas, like Port St. Lucie and Palm Bay, are part of a growing biotech cluster in central Florida. Straddling Texas and Arkansas, Texarkana is seeing war-related development: Its Red River Army Depot is a major maintenance and storage facility for military equipment. And St. George, Utah, located about 120 miles from Las Vegas, has boomed in recent years as a destination for retirees.

All of them sit at or near the top of Forbes’ list of America’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas, places large and small that offer at least the promise of booming economies for years to come.

To compile our list, we looked at all of the country’s 363 metropolitan areas, defined by the U.S. Census Bureau has a geographic region with a “core urban area” of at least 50,000 people. Because many small metro areas are high growth–and because we wanted to show growth in large cities as well–we split the group into two classes: the largest 100 metro areas (with at least 528,000 people) and everyone else. We use projections run for us by Moody’s Economy.com to show growth in GMP between 2007-2012.

Of course, if one looks at economic growth in the country’s largest 100 metros, the usual suspects jump to the top of the list. With an estimated 32% GMP growth from 2007-2012, Austin, Texas, is the winner for big metros. Atlanta, Seattle, Orlando, Houston and San Jose, Calif., also appear high on the list. What do they all have in common? They’re tech hubs with proximity to universities and a healthy increase in population. Austin’s population, for example, is expected to increase by nearly 15% by 2012, according to Moody’s Economy.com forecasts.

Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, says there are several factors to take into consideration when measuring the pulse of a metro area: innovation, human capital, infrastructure and the actual quality of a place.

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Builders and remodelers who work steadily on readjusting their business practices in response to the current economic downturn stand a good chance of surviving until better times arrive and trouncing the competition during the recovery, according to housing industry veterans appearing at the International Builders’ Show (IBS) in Orlando last month with the battle scars to prove they have weathered previous housing slumps.

“Today’s housing market is obviously not the same housing market that existed a couple of years ago, and that means you can’t afford to run your company the same way you did then,” said Michael Sivage, of Sivage Community Development in Albuquerque, N.M., who moderated the panel. The industry faces “another challenging year” following a “tough” 2007, he warned, and the burden is on builders to persuade consumers to consider the home-buying opportunities in today’s market despite the daily barrage of negative reports in the news media.

Sivage asked each builder to track where their businesses have gone since the start of the downturn in 2006 and discuss what they are doing to get through 2008 and prepare for better times ahead. Among the accounts shared with the convention audience:

Robert Camp, of Camp Corporation in Lakewood, Wash., said that his company closed sales on only 35 homes last year, compared to 125 in a good market; saw declining profit margins; and ran into cash-flow problems. This year, his objectives are to reduce the inventory and cut interest costs by 50%. To get out from under the interest burden, he is offering his customers the opportunity to rent houses in the existing inventory and then purchase them in two years, with rent set aside to help them qualify for a mortgage.

Camp has also resorted to “bare bones pricing” that has cut the selling price an average of $20,000 per unit by trimming construction costs, such as scaling back to a one-car garage. In a new subdivision going up on developed property owned by the company, on a pre-sale basis only, starter homes are being offered for just under $200,000, compared to $250,000 to $275,000 previously.

“The idea is to do something every day to help your company get through this downturn,” he said. For example, he has stopped accepting bids on projects. “We tell subcontractors what we can afford to pay, making sure they make a profit so we all will be in business in 2009.”

Camp is looking for 60 sales this year and has already made it a third of the way to his goal. “Don’t crawl into a hole thinking you can avoid all of this. It’s not going to go away,” he said. He also advised builders to take advantage of the resources available at their local home builders associations and “find people who can tell you how they got through things.”

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Luxury towers adding new dimension to coastal skylines

By Carrie Alexander
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, March 02, 2008

Condominium developers along the Texas Gulf Coast are doing something strange these days: They’re continuing to build.

As a housing slump grips much of the nation, beachfront development in long-hot locales such as Florida and California has g

round nearly to a halt. But the real estate market on the Texas coast — and specifically, the condo market — has managed to stay strong.

“We did feel the downturn, but not the devastation some markets have had,” says Alice Donahue, a real estate broker who o

perates TexasGulfCoastOnline.com, a site that tracks real estate trends in the area.

Jim Gaines, a research economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, says that while the national credit crunch has had an impact on the Texas Gulf Coast condo market, most developers “still feel things are pretty good.”

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By Shonda Novak | Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 03:25 PM

Groundbreaking has been delayed for the condo project called 1155 Barton Springs, which is destined to replace the long-vacant Treehouse restaurant and nightclub at Dawson and Barton Springs Road.

Developers Elisabeth and Steffen Waltz and their partners had hoped to start construction on the project by the end of 2007. But yesterday, Elisabeth Waltz wrote in an email:

“These times seem to call for a measured approach. It may take us a few more months to start construction; we will start when we have 50% or more of the residences sold. (Personally, having been a real estate broker for many years, I would prefer all of them pre-sold).”

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The burbs no longer beckon residents who want to end commutes and be close to it all.

By Shonda Novak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, February 10, 2008

‘Urban Re-Renewal: Downtowns making a comeback as places to call home.”

“Downtown Living All the Rage.”

“Crazy for condos: Downtown Scottsdale joins nation’s upscale urban living boom.”

Headlines in cities across the country document the continued popularity of downtown living, a trend that re-emerged in the 1990s locally and nationally. In this sense, Austin isn’t so weird after all.

Like Boston, Detroit, Denver and many other cities, Austin has its share of singles and young professionals, executives, empty nesters, retirees and, increasingly, young families headed to where the action is: downtown.

They’re being drawn by the dining, music, nightlife and recreational and cultural amenities, from galleries and performing arts venues to Lady Bird Lake.

They are a diverse group, of all ages and occupations.

“Time is the most important commodity that people have in their lives, and living downtown means people spending less time stuck in traffic and more time enjoying life,” says Larry Warshaw, a co-developer of four condominium projects in East Austin and the 42-story Spring tower under construction downtown. “I see it being a trend that will continue for several decades.”

Warshaw echoes the views of other experts, including John McIlwain, senior fellow resident for housing with the Urban Land Institute who himself moved from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to live in that city’s downtown.

“There are and always will be those who want a house with a yard in the suburbs,” McIlwain says, “but more and more are opting to move to the revived cities. Decades of major investments in cities by the federal government along with mayors focusing on the basics have made cities safe and vibrant places to live.”

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Tags: austin, building, buyers, condos, downtown, investing, money, neighborhoods, urban living, where to buy by Aria
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