Selling homes with dinosaurs, climate change’s impact on football stadiums and the real estate developer friend from hell. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Oct. 14-18.
Hit: Jurassic Property. Kudos to Jonathan Benton of East Key Realty for promoting a property in Londonderry, New Hampshire, by featuring a family of inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rexes as the residents of the house. The dinosaur family is shown playing in the front yard and back yard, making cookies in the kitchen and relaxing in the family room – and the property’s listing is joke- and pun-heavy in describing “vaulted ceilings big enough to make a pterodactyl jealous” and a kitchen that is a “T-Rexcellent space for any chef.” This was certainly the funniest listing online this week, and maybe Benton can inspire other realtors to lighten up their listings with some playful humor.
Miss: No Dollars, No Sense. The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced it exhausted the funds for its disaster loan program and will need to pause new loan offers for its direct, low-interest, long-term loans to disaster survivors until Congress appropriates additional funds. SBA can make disaster loans up to $500,000 to homeowners to repair or replace disaster-damaged or destroyed real estate. However, SBA said individuals and small businesses can still apply for loans, noting it received guarantees from congressional leaders that additional funding will be provided when Congress returns into session next month. With all the talk about climate risks during the Biden-Harris years, shouldn’t the SBA have been properly budgeted to deal with problems related to climate change, rather than be caught short and blame Congress for not providing the agency with enough money? And speaking of climate…
Miss: Climate Change Meets Football. NFL stadiums could experience up to $11 billion in cumulative losses by 2050 as a result of escalating climate threats, according to a new report from the climate risk analysis firm Climate X. MetLife Stadium in New Jersey was projected to incur the highest total percentage loss of 184% with cumulative damages exceeding $5.6 billion by 2050 due to its low elevation and exposure to surface flooding and storm surges. But at the other end of the spectrum, Lumen Field in Seattle and Lambeau Field in Green Bay were projected to have much lower relative loss rates thanks to Seattle’s temperate climate and Lambeau Field’s Wisconsin location that never experiences wildfires, cyclones, and storm surges. Ultimately, it seems the only climate that impacts these stadiums is the economic climate – especially when the team owners get the itch to move into larger and more expensive venues funded by taxpayers.
Miss: And Water’s Wet. Perhaps the least invigorating interview this week was MarketWatch’s Q&A with Priscilla Almodovar, CEO of Fannie Mae, who looked at the housing market and exclaimed, “It’s a highly unaffordable market right now. We are monitoring and following all these trends, things that we’ve never seen before. You have home prices the highest we’ve seen in two decades.” Uh, yeah…and? Almodovar added it was unlikely for mortgage rates of the pre-pandemic era, adding the 3% rate seen during the pandemic is something that “we probably will never see that again in our lifetime.” Uh, yeah…and? Oh, she noted, housing remains “one of the most important domestic policy issues that we have to tackle.” Is any of this news to you?
Hit: Taking a Chance on Christmas. At a time when too many retailers are closing stores, the seasonal retailer Spirit Halloween is seeking to expand its pop-up retail operations beyond Oct. 31 with a pilot program offering new Spirit Christmas pop-up stores. The company is planning to operate 10 Spirit Christmas stores in the Northeast with four in New Jersey, three in New York, and one in each of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania – and if this works, it could become a new holiday shopping destination. “Our goal is to create a festive retail experience that captures the spirit of the season, much like we do for Halloween,” said a company spokesperson. If the success that Spirit Halloween can be duplicated for the year-end holidays, this could become a much-needed bright spot in the retail sector.
Miss: With Friends Like This. Houston resident Walter Salek was sentenced to 15 months in prison for cheating a friend out of more than $1 million in a fraudulent real estate scheme. Salek diverted at least $571,000 of the investment funds for his own personal use on mortgage payments and luxury vacations. But the real outrage was that Salek betrayed his friend’s trust by taking his money when Salek knew the victim’s wife was dying and leaving him with three children to raise. I don’t know if the 15 months – followed by three years of supervised release – is the maximum possible sentence for Salek, but he certainly wins the prize of the most despicable phony friend imaginable.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
Photo courtesy meme.ig
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