Down payments are down again - for first-time buyers

The median amount first-time home buyers contributed as an equity stake shrank in 2017, the National Association of Realtors said.

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Private island on the Georgia coast listed at $17.25 million (PHOTOS)

A private island with three residences and a waterfront club near Sea Island on the southeastern coast of Georgia is on the market for $17.25 million. Check out the adjacent slideshow. Little Hawkins Island, at 120 Hawkins Lane on St. Simons Island, is one of the highest-priced residential properties in the state. The next highest-priced single-family home for sale on the Golden Isles Association of Realtors’ website is Cottage 441 on Sea Island, listed at $16.5 million. The highest priced single-family…

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The Best and Worst Cities in America to Survive the Apocalypse

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We live in uneasy and downright queasy times. What’s causing Americans to hit the panic button? Is it:

a) devastating hurricanes
b) demoralizing tweetstorms
c) cyberattacks
d) gun attacks
e) North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc.
f) zombies
g) everything

You didn’t really need us to tell you the answer is “g,” right? Apocalypse. … Wow. Even to the most positive-minded among us, it sometimes seems the world is on the verge of collapse. So just in case civilization does indeed crumble, explode, or implode around you, it makes sense to have a plan. Where do you go to eke out survival?

The location you call home could mean the difference between life and death in the face of utter disaster—but the safest place depends on what kind of disaster we’re talking about. That’s where the realtor.com® data team comes in. We donned our biohazard gear, pulled together a gross of canned goods and filtered water and set our sights on the best—and worst—metros to to survive two wildly different end-of-days scenarios: a nuclear calamity (more terrifying every day, thank you Kim Jong Un) and a zombie apocalypse (hey, it could happen).

Don’t ask us which is worse.

There are home features, like impregnable panic rooms, that could increase your chance of remaining among the living during an attack of the  walking dead, or any fast-spreading, deadly contagion. But if your panic room is located in the middle of a big city, then your odds go down. Large urban centers are like all-you-can-eat buffets for zombies—all those delectable brains! Meanwhile, a bunker or fallout shelter could save your skin during a nuclear attack—unless it’s right near a military base, making it a top target.

Decisions, decisions.

“Surviving a disaster will often have more to do with where you are than with any other factor,” says Richard Duarte, a Miami-based personal injury attorney and author of the book “Surviving Doomsday.” “Finding yourself in a highly populated urban center, competing with violent crowds for dwindling resources, will usually not end well. If the scarcity doesn’t get you, the resulting chaos certainly will.”

“On the other hand, being in a low-density rural location, with more abundant natural resources, and far fewer mouths to feed, will dramatically increase your chances of surviving the crisis,” he says.

So we looked at a variety of criteria that could mean the difference between life, death, and the fate of the walking undead. We looked at the 200 largest U.S. metros and only included one per state. Our criteria included:*

• Percentage of realtor.com home listings with a lake, pond, or well (for drinking water)
• Percentage of listings with a safe room or panic room
• Percentage listings with a bunker, fallout shelter, or underground shelter
• Percentage of listings with solar panels or hydropower (to fuel your home if the grid goes dark)
• Population density
• Percentage of active military and federal government employees (nuke targets)
• Percentage of health care workers
• Percentage of manufacturing workers (more nuke targets)
• State gun score (tracking the ability to stockpile weapons)
• Percentage of landmass covered by fresh water

Gear up and let’s take on the most frightening scenarios first. You’ll thank us one day. (Actually, we hope you won’t.)

Best cities to survive a nuclear apocalypse A scenario where “hottest markets” are the least desirable.

Claire Widman

America’s top cities are not terrific places to be during a nuclear attack—many of them are likely to be on the first-strike target list, especially hubs for government, finance, or corporate infrastructure, or cities that just may be internationally famous (for symbolic value). Military bases are also a great big bullseye. But hold on: The federal government also considers things like airfields, ports, refineries, and energy centers to be targets.

“There is no safe place. There are only safer places,” says Robert Vicino, CEO and founder of the Vivos Group, a group that sells bunkers throughout the world.

You may want to head to Kansas City, MO. The metro has one of the highest rates of housing listings with bunkers or fallout shelters. It also has more than its fair share of homes with basements, as well as those made out of brick—a structure that is better prepared for a nuclear blast. The metro has become something of a prepper mecca—In 2013, Vivos announced plans to build a huge bunker capable of housing around 5,000 people. Structural issues caused the group to abandon the project a year later, but there’s still no shortage of large underground shelters.

On the downside, Fort Leavenworth, an army base on more than 5,000 acres, is about 35 miles to the northwest. So stick to the southeast side of the city.

If you survive the initial blast, you’ll face a long road ahead. One of the basic needs is drinking water, so living in a city like Duluth (No. 7) is a big plus, given the high number of properties with lakes, ponds, and wells. You’ll also need some form of power—San Luis Obispo has a higher-than-average number of homes with solar panels listed on realtor.com. And a city like Manchester has plenty of health care professionals to treat any festering injuries. (And there are likely to be plenty.)

If you’re worried about a nuclear event, what type of home should you seek out?

“Some [preppers] are all about water sources. Others want to get deep into the mountains,” says Theresa Mondale, broker and owner of the United Country-Western Montana Group in Missoula, MT. Mondale specializes in survivable and sustainable properties. “My clients range from college students, retired government officials to high-ranking Silicon Valley [folks].”

After Kansas City, the best places to survive nuclear disaster are New Haven, CT, in second place, followed by Ann Arbor, MI; Hagerstown, MD; Springfield, MA; Manchester, NH; Duluth, MN; San Luis Obispo, CA; Crestview, FL; and Lincoln, NE.

OK, so what are the place to avoid like nuclear waste? Let’s take a (scary) look.

Worst cities to survive a nuclear apocalypse

People around the world hunger for a taste of the Big Apple, but if a nuke drops while you visit, it could be your last taste: New York leads the list of worst places in the United States to ride out an attack. Like most of America’s largest cities, NYC would be hit with a deadly double whammy: In addition to being a primary target, it has precious few natural resources to make post-blast survival possible. Unless you enjoy eating grilled subway rats?

Big cities usually have most of their goods (food, bottled water, medical supplies) shipped in. Once that stopped, panic would quickly set in.

Even getting out of most urban areas, which rely on public transportation and are known for clogged roadways, could be near-impossible. That’s especially true for Miami, our fifth worst-ranked metro—as thousands of people learned while fleeing Hurricane Irma in September.

“There are very few ways to get out of here during a massive evacuation—the only way to go is north,” Duarte says. “Surprisingly, there are only three major highways out of South Florida. Under normal circumstances, those arteries are already congested.”

After New York, our data crunching ranked Los Angeles as the second-worst nuclear haven, Dallas the third, and Nashville, TN, the fourth.

Rounding out the list are Atlanta, ranked sixth, followed by Washington, DC; Philadelphia; Fayetteville, NC; and Seattle.

If you call one of these urban centers home, here’s something to cheer you up: Just about everyone would be screwed during a nuclear strike. So there’s that.

“If it does happen, I don’t know if any amount of time preparing will do much difference. I’ve seen what happens in the aftermath of a simple weather event—people go into chaos,” Duarte says. “That thing we call civilization goes away quick.”

Phew. Let’s lighten the mood a bit and turn to zombies! We all love zombies, right?

Best cities to survive the zombie Armageddon BRAAAINNNSSS

Claire Widman

Anytime a disease spreads from one continent to another, it follows a similar pattern: An unknowingly infected person boards a plane and spreads the illness to others for the whole flight—until they land at a major international airport. In a major city. And once they get to those packed metros, they spread it some more. And on and on.

Zombie-ism is a disease. So if you’re fond of your brains, you don’t want to be in a big city.

That’s why smaller metros head up our walking dead survival list. Topping the list is Lubbock, TX—and the reason can be found in the early scenes of the movie “Zombieland,” when the hero lists his “rules.”  The first: Keep up with your cardio! (You need to be fit to outrun the undead, especially the fast type.) But the second rule is all about the double tap: Always shoot your zombie twice in the head, just to be on the safe side. Cue gun-lovin’ Texas.

Being located in one of the most Second Amendment-friendly states offers plenty of opportunities to get familiar with your firearms prior to the zombie takeover. There are a whole lot of shooting ranges in the area, such as the Patriot Firearms & Family Shooting Center.

But marksmanship alone won’t keep you alive for long. You have to sleep sometime! Lubbock also has an unusually high number of impenetrable, windowless safe rooms and panic rooms—great hideouts where you can avoid legions of soulless animated corpses. “We had a  huge tornado here in the 1970s. What came out of it was that Texas Tech became a leader in creating safe rooms” to protect against future disasters, says area real estate agent Jacky Howard of Coldwell Banker.

While proximity to military bases could prove fatal with nukes, it’s likely a godsend in the face of the living dead. A military outpost would have the soldiers, ammunition, and tanks required to take down those rotting herds.

After Lubbock, Deltona, FL, came in second, followed by San Luis Obispo, CA.

Oklahoma City, at No. 4, was an exception to the small-metro rule. Like Wichita, KS, at No. 7, it’s in the swath of country known as Tornado Alley. These areas have plenty of homes with bunkers and safe rooms to survive the twisters—and far creepier things.

Rounding out the survival list are Kalamazoo, MI; Duluth, MN; Fort Smith, AR; Prescott, AZ, and Lynchburg, VA.

All right, the fun is over. As we’ve learned from “The Walking Dead,” no one lives forever (RIP, Sasha). So let’s take a terrifying look at the very worst places to find yourself.

Worst cities to survive the zombie Armageddon

A zombie apocalypse would take a little while to ramp up to full force. It might start with media reports of a breakout of a rage-inducing disease. That could convince you to stay inside for a few days. But by the time you came to grasp the situation, it might be too late to leave.

Now imagine living in New York, the very worst city to be situated when the zombies take over. In fact, surviving the undead in Manhattan could be even tougher than surviving nukes (or, for that matter, slow-moving tourists). You’d be lucky to make it a block in this jam-packed city without being ripped into something that resembles pulled pork. Just ask Rick Grimes, who barely escaped a zombie mob in downtown Atlanta during the first episode of “The Walking Dead.” (Spoiler: His horse gets eaten).

In case of zombie apocalypse, learn from Rick Grimes, and get out of the city.

AMC

It almost goes without saying, but you can’t grow a garden in a 500-square-foot apartment. And unless you purchased about 1,000 cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup prior to the walkers’ invasion, you’re outta luck. The lesson here is that if you live in a huge city and start seeing people take bites out of each other, it is time to run for the hills.

For those reasons, large cities dominated our list of the worst places to survive a zombie apocalypse. Chicago came in second, followed by Washington, DC; Las Vegas, NV; Cedar Rapids, IA; Portland, OR; Nashville, TN; Seattle; Bridgeport, CT; and Los Angeles.

Still, you might want to take some precautions in case you can’t get out in time.

“Equipping a home with shatter-resistant windows, security devices, and alarm systems could go a long way,” says author Duarte. “Anything you can do to slow down a potential intruder or mindless zombie without much intelligence” would be good. Amen!

*Data sources: realtor.com, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, Department of Defense, and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

The post The Best and Worst Cities in America to Survive the Apocalypse appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

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Justin Bieber Reportedly Beats Ban, Rents Beverly Hills Home for $55K a Month

Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/Redferns

Pop star Justin Bieber—the real estate bête noire—is back in Beverly Hills, CA, according to TMZ. The chart-topping singer must have been desperate to get back to the swanky digs of 90210, despite a pact by local homeowners to bar him from the area.

Bieber apparently beat the ban—the social media star will move into an 8,600-square-foot contemporary estate with six bedrooms for $55,000 a month. That spread seems ideal for a tenant who wants to entertain. We’re guessing he’ll probably want to—we hope the neighbors have been warned.

The property features an open floor plan; hardwood floors throughout; a large space for eating, cooking, and living; home theater; gym; office; and en suite bedrooms.

The grassy yard includes a pool, spa, and fire pit with seating area. There’s also a two-car garage and ample parking.

The listing also notes that the property can be rented furnished, which is key for a globe-trotting musician who doesn’t want to schlep couches into a luxury abode.

Justin Bieber’s Beverly Hills rental

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Living room

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Kitchen

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Patrick Michael and Jonathan Massaband of CIRG Brokerage Inc. and L.A. Estate Rentals have the listing.

“This home has been featured in many high-end music videos, commercials, and magazines [and] rented before to one of the biggest soccer players in the world,” says Michael. “All of our homes we represent are high-end luxury furnished homes that attract a celebrity and affluent clientele from around the world who are looking for a … five-star hotel experience, but with the privacy of a home.”

In 2014, Bieber earned the unofficial title of “Worst Neighbor Ever” for his antics as a 90210 renter. In Calabasas, the singer paid a neighbor $80,000 after throwing eggs at his home. Hey, maybe this time the “Sorry” singer really is sorry. Or not.

Without a home to call his own, the Real Deal reports, Beiber was previously holed up at a Beverly Hills hotel.

While Beverly Hills locals weren’t ready to roll out the red carpet, New Jersey gave Bieber a warm welcome this summer. The singer apparently took a shine to the Montclair area, and surprised residents with his random appearances.

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How Does the Ghost Take Her Eggs at This Haunted Bed-and-Breakfast?

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A charming inn in Saint Francisville, LA, is on the market for $975,000, and comes with 10 beds,10 baths, and quite possibly one ghost.

“Almost every house has its own ghost story,” listing agent Anthony Posey says of the local real estate. This historic property is no exception.

Built in 1880, the house was originally owned by Morris Wolf. According to the current homeowner, Laurie Walsh, Wolf eventually passed on the place to his employee Aaron Schlesinger,

The home stayed in the Schlesinger family for decades until it was abandoned, Walsh explains. In the 1980s it was bought by a family who restored it.

Walsh purchased the home in 1990 with her husband, a retired petroleum engineer. She had family in the hotel business in New Orleans, and the couple decided to try their hand at running a bed-and-breakfast. They’ve operated the St. Francisville Inn for 27 years now with minimal problem save for the occasional haunted happenstance.

Now they’d like to pass the inn over to someone else. The property, which “oozes charm and romance,” includes the B&B operation, a restaurant, and gift store. It has “all the necessary licenses,” according to the listing.

There’s also a commercial kitchen, formal dining room, library, wine parlor, and private living quarters for the innkeeper.

All the guest rooms open to a picturesque inner courtyard and swimming pool.

All the guest rooms open to the courtyard.

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Covered porch

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Dining room

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Library

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The home in 1974

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As for the pesky ghost sightings, Walsh notes that the spooky experiences mainly came from her children’s interactions. “The kids used to talk about a little girl upstairs with pigtails who they called Darlene,” she says.

Once when the Walsh family had friends over, a friend’s child, about 3 years old, went looking for Walsh’s children. “He came down by himself, we asked him who he was talking to, and he said, ‘the little girl Darlene who lived upstairs, you know the girl with the pigtails,'” She says. But there’s “no Darlene here.” Spooky!

More recently, repeat guests of the inn have mentioned “a ghost in Room 2 who messes with the water.” Plumbing issue or apparition intervention in the pipes? That’s for a buyer to decide.

Either way, it’s a popular place to stay around Halloween. And if you do buy the place and get a glimpse of Darlene, ask her nicely to stop fiddling with the water pressure in Room 2.

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Designed for Dread: Why Are Victorian Houses So Spooky?

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When it comes to horror flicks, there’s nothing Hollywood loves more than a towering Victorian manse that’s a bit past its prime. After all, there’s a reason Ryan Murphy set the inaugural (and scariest) “Murder House” season of “American Horror Story” in a sprawling (and spectacularly haunted) Victorian home. Alfred Hitchcock situated Norman Bates and his irascible mom in one for “Psycho.” Even Walt Disney understood the Victorian’s freaky allure—that’s why Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is built in the same inescapable and inescapably unnerving style.

So why do Victorians make our flesh crawl quite the way they do? How did this highly ornate style—dubbed the “McMansion” of the antebellum period by one scholar—become so feared?

“It has a lot to do with the proportions,” says Jonathan Moore, an architect in Tampa, FL. “Many of the details—like doors, windows, and trim—are long and vertical.” Remind you of anything?

“There’s a direct relationship to an open mouth and wide eyes.” A screaming mouth, that is.

Terrifying visuals aside, there are a few nuanced reasons—firmly grounded in architectural history—why Victorians turned into the pop culture stuff of nightmares.

Victorians were inherently ‘dark’

So let’s start at the beginning: The Victorian era is typically defined as beginning in 1837—when Queen Victoria of England ascended the throne. But the period’s influence on American architecture focuses on the years between 1860 and 1900.

Homes built during this period typically drew their influences from Gothic Revival, Romanesque, Queen Anne, and Second Empire styles. For example: false fronts, false chimneys, tall towers, dormer windows, and gables. Victorians were typically situated on hilltops, where their usually wealthy owners could, quite literally, look down on their neighbors.

Victorians often feature tall turrets or rectangular towers topped by ornate cast-iron railings and prominent weather vanes—features that rusted and sometimes slipped out of place over time.

“These are the house styles Hollywood depicts high on a hilltop with bright lightning strikes in the background, causing the descriptor building to be outlined in dark silhouette against the sudden light,” says archaeologist and architectural historian Ronald V. May of Legacy 106 Historic Preservation in California.

In other words: creepy.

The era was also notable for its overwrought furniture, dark interiors, and heavy draperies, says Charles Robertson, a board member of the Victorian Society of America (who himself lives in a meticulously maintained Victorian home in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood).

During their heyday, “these houses were indeed dark and cluttered,” he says. “They had bric-a-brac everywhere, and they were just elaborate and ornate.”

Move toward modern architecture left Victorians empty and decrepit

Interest in the genre waned dramatically over the years, leaving more and more Victorian homes empty and decrepit. Some historians claim the downfall of the Victorian aesthetic really began with the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago—the site of which became known as “White City” for its clean, mostly white neoclassical buildings.

It was the beginning of the end for Victorian homes’ heyday, according to Robertson. The style fell out of favor in the 1930s as tastes began to skew toward modern design.

As time wore on, “the elderly owners passed away, and their children let the houses fall into serious disrepair with little or no paint, causing shingles to slough off, ornamental metal roof edges to rust and break down, pieces of siding drop off, and windows break and not be replaced,” May says.

A Victorian revival?

But here’s the thing: What goes around indeed comes around. Look no further than San Francisco, which has enjoyed a historic home preservation blitz over the past several decades—and where a Painted Lady will now run you at least $3 million.

And if the headache of a large-scale renovation isn’t your bag, there are a handful of builders committed to building “new Victorian” homes—although the intricacies involved in this kind of construction make it more expensive than your usual run-of-the-mill new build.

But in the end, Americans love a good horror story—and classic Victorians provide the perfect backdrop.

“The aging population of historic homes makes everyone familiar with that one neighborhood house that has deteriorated, and everyone talks about the crazy old man that used to live there,” Moore says.

Throw in peeling wallpaper and paint, decades-old dusty draperies, and more gables and turrets than could possibly be prudent, and you’ve got the stuff of nightmares (and more than a few urban legends).

———

Watch: We Dare to Peek Inside the Winchester Mystery House

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Tight Inventory Drives High Prices, Quick Sales in the Nation’s Hottest Markets

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What’s a home buyer to do? Listing prices for residential real estate remain near historical highs in October, pushed up by a continuing shortage of homes for sale, according to a preliminary analysis of October data on realtor.com®.

In June, the median home list price for the country ascended to $275,000 for the first time, and it has remained there ever since. (Well, almost—it slipped to $274,000 in September. Chump change!)

The culprit: There are still far more would-be buyers than there are homes for sale.

“The usual fall drop-off in inventory is compounded this year by scarcer listings than we saw one year ago and more shoppers than we typically see in this October,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for realtor.com.

Sure as pumpkins and skeletons are sprouting up along the sidewalks, the seasonal drop-off in housing inventory has begun: We’re expecting to see 2% fewer listings in October, when we close the books, than there were in September. That would also be 8% fewer than the previous October.

And those few-and-far-between homes are selling quickly—8% faster than one year ago, in fact. Properties are spending a median 73 days on the market.

“Potential buyers who waited until fall hoping to score a bargain will find slim pickings,” Hale noted. “One potential bright spot for market-fatigued buyers is that new listings are up slightly from one year ago.”

About 420,000 new listings are expected to have hit the market by the end of October.

Amid all this, some real estate markets remain way buzzier than others.

Realtor.com compiled its monthly list of the hottest metro markets in the country by looking at where homes are snapped up in days and buyers can’t stop clicking to find their dream home.

This month’s list has San Jose, CA, maintaining its top spot, while Vallejo, CA, which is adjacent to fire-ravaged Napa and Sonoma counties, moved up a spot to second place.

And while California continues to dominate the hot list with 10 metro markets (which include neighboring towns—i.e., the San Francisco market also sweeps in Oakland and Hayward), nine other states across the country also made a showing.

Among this month’s big movers is Boston, which vaulted up 14 spots to reach the top five for the first time since May. Midland, TX, jumped 11 spots, and Janesville, WI, rose 10 spots to break into the top 20 for the first time.

The hot list

Rank (October)	20 Hottest Markets	Rank (September)	Rank Change
1	San Jose, CA	1	0
2	Vallejo, CA	3	1
3	San Francisco, CA	2	-1
4	San Diego, CA	5	1
5	Boston, MA	19	14
6	Stockton, CA	6	0
7	Sacramento, CA	8	1
8	Detroit, MI	10	2
9	Denver, CO	13	4
10	Modesto, CA	9	-1
11	Columbus, OH	11	0
12	Fresno, CA	15	3
13	Dallas, TX	12	-1
14	Nashville, TN	16	2
15	Colorado Springs, CO	18	3
16	Midland, TX	27	11
17	Rochester, NY	25
18	Oxnard, CA	14	-4
19	Santa Cruz, CA	26	7
20	Janesville, WI	30	10

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