Renoir's Montmartre House Is for Sale in Paris

A longtime Parisian home of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir is on the market for €3.75 million (about $5.5 million), reduced from its listing last year of €4.5 million.

Known as the Château des Brouillards (mists), the 18th-century stone house was also the childhood home of famed filmmaker Jean Renoir, the painter's second son. The house is in Montmartre, the Bohemian enclave that lured Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and many other artists. The neighborhood figures in Renoir's 1876 masterpiece "Le Moulin de la Galette," as well as the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The four-floor, 3,200-square-foot stone house has four bedrooms and a concierge's apartment. There's a front garden and a 1,200-square-foot interior garden. The current owner's family has held the property for about half a century and hasn't renovated the interior, says listing agent Xavier Attal, of Immobest International in association with Quintessentially Estates and Prestige Properties.

Jean Renoir, who directed "Grand Illusion," wrote extensively about the Château in a memoir of his father, who died in 1919 at 78, calling it an "odd conglomeration" of buildings "perched high above the Paris mist" whose hedge let its inhabitants live "in a world apart."

I just thought I would pass this along :)

Mortgage rates are the lowest since summer of 2005

Rates on 30-year mortgages dropped for a third straight week to the lowest level since the summer of 2005 as worries intensified about the current economic slowdown.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.69 percent this week.

It marked the second week that 30-year mortgages have been below 6 percent and the third straight weekly decline since rates closed out 2007 at 6.17 percent. This week’s average was the lowest since 30-year mortgages were at 5.66 percent the week of July 14, 2005.
Other types of mortgages also showed declines this week.

Rates on 15-year mortgages, a popular choice for refinancing, dropped to 5.21 percent this week, down from 5.43 percent last week.

Rates on five-year adjustable-rate mortgages declined to 5.40 percent, compared to 5.63 percent last week while rates on one-year ARMs fell to 5.26 percent, down from 5.37 percent last week.

It marked the first time that the 15-year rate has fallen below one-year adjustable-rate mortgages in seven years.

A year ago, 30-year mortgages stood at 6.23 percent while rates on 15-year mortgages were at 5.98 percent. Five-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 6.04 percent and one-year ARMs were at 5.51 percent this time a year ago.

Salt Lake County Sales Activity Trend Report

I am going to be posting on a weekly bases the previous weeks sales activity trend for Salt Lake County. If you have any question, please call me.

Time Period: January 1, 2008 through January 11, 2008

Days on Market
01 - 30 - 70
31 - 60 - 48
61 - 90 - 32
91 - 120 - 18
121 or Over - 19

Average - 54

Days on Market is calculated by counting the days between the Listing Date and the Contract Date (the date the home goes under contract).

This information is deemed to be reliable, however WFRMLS, and daledansie.com does not guarantee accuracy.

If you're selling in spring, clean now!

If you want to sell you home in spring, don't wait until then to clean, do it now!

If you know you want to move by summer, now is not too early to bring somebody in. Now -- not when the tulips are poking from the ground -- is the time to de-clutter, clean, make repairs, get paperwork together and interview real estate agents. Homeowners with a lot of junk can take two to four weeks just to get through this step. You want to make it look sparse, unpersonalized, but not empty. Boxes should be out of sight. Keep workstations or hobby areas such as sewing machines organized and neat.

When cleaning, pay attention to the stairs, molding, windows and appliances. Replace any old or missing light bulbs. Also make sure no light bulbs are burned out. You need to have someone else look at the house, perhaps a home inspector, or a neighbor. A second pair of eyes can see something you've been purposely overlooking for years.

Replacing light fixtures and faucets is a relatively inexpensive way to freshen up rooms. You should consider having the roof inspected and certified to reassure buyers it is in good repair. You should start pulling paperwork together. If there is a mortgage on the property, ask the lender for payoff figures, including any penalties for paying the loan off early. List upgrades and repairs done in the past five years and gather warranties for appliances and the roof; having that information in hand speeds up the process.

I would be happy to come look through your home if you would like.

Some Home Fix-Up Tasks Are Worth Skipping

If your New Year's resolution is to sell a home in 2008, it's probably time to start thinking about how to make that home stand out from the rest.

But before planning any projects, beware: Homeowners aren't recouping as many improvement costs as they could in recent years, according to a recent study by Remodeling magazine. In fact, real-estate agents advise clients not to overdo it, regardless of what the local market conditions are like.

It's more important that it's neat, it's clean and it looks spacious, rather than making sure it's the top of the line, bypass projects that aren't necessary.

If you do a lot of remodeling, DON'T take the cost of the remodeling and add it to the cost of the home and ask the buyer to pay for it, you won't get that higher price.

To keep costs down and spend remodeling dollars wisely, consider the following tips.

1. Ask for advice. Before making any remodeling plans, clear your home of clutter and rent a storage unit, if necessary, to hold extra stuff while the home is on the market. Then, get some advice from a local real-estate agent on how the home stacks up against the competition.

2. Dig deeper. It also could pay to look below the surface by getting a home inspection before listing the property. That way, problems that could hold up a sale are addressed in advance.

3. Look outside. Pay attention to exterior details like the condition of siding and windows.

4. Spend time in the bathroom. Freshening up the bathroom doesn't have to be expensive, but it could be important. It's most important for the bathroom to be clean, but sellers should also consider replacing the fixtures, tub, sink and toilet. Replace cracked tiles and curled linoleum.

5. Keep it small in the kitchen. The other room that often sells a house is the kitchen, but it might be best to keep renovations modest. Remodeling magazine's report found that homeowners could recover 83% of the cost of a minor kitchen remodel at resale, compared with 78.1% of a major kitchen remodel.