What Zillow Offers

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MARKET RECAP Mortgage application activity has been volatile this year, and the recent past proved no different: both refinance and purchase application activity surged nearly 15% in the latest reported week. That said, the increased activity had little impact on mortgage rates, which have been quiet after falling palpably a couple weeks back. Borrowers are obviously taking advantage of a good deal, and rationally so. We’d like to see the trend in mortgage activity hold, particularly in purchase loans. This would bode well for the home sales outlook. We’ve been advocating that prospective home buyers use leverage (mortgages) in a market where home prices are rising. Leverage increases returns in such an environment. At the same time, it frees capital for other uses. Improvements can be found in other areas of the mortgage market as well. Delinquencies, for instance, which are trending lower. Lender Processing Services reports that delinquencies are down to 7.03% of all mortgages, a marked improvement from the 7.17% that prevailed in December and the 7.67% that prevailed in January 2012. The falling trend in delinquencies is a by-product of improved job creation. More mortgage holders working means more mortgage holders are able to service their loans. We expect both trends ? rising job creation and better mortgage servicing ? to continue through 2013. Pricing is another trend we expect to hold through the year. That is, we expect home prices to continue to trend higher. On that front, the data continue to support our expectations. CoreLogic’s latest home-price data show home prices nationwide increased 9.7% year-over-year in January, which represents the biggest increase since April 2006. This also marks the 11th-consecutive monthly increase in home prices nationally. We see no reason for prices to backslide. First, distressed inventory continues to be reduced in an orderly manner. Fewer homes are queuing into the foreclosure process, and investor interest remains robust (and very robust among institutional firms). Second, inventory remains lows, and that’s highly unlikely to change. We have entered into what appears to be a self-fulfilling expectations market: Potential home sellers expect prices to rise, so they withhold their home from the market. This keeps inventory low. Buyers, in turn, are forced to bid against each other on reduced inventory. This leads to price increases. The good news is that affordability remains high. So even though prices are rising, homes remain within the wheelhouse of a rising level of potential buyers. In short, the Goldilocks market of low interest rates, low (but rising) home prices remains. How long it will remain is anyone’s guess. We do know, though, it won’t remain in perpetuity.

MARKET RECAP There was little to dislike about housing and the mortgage market this past week. First, the former: Home prices continue to trend higher, as they’ve been trending for the past 12 months. S&P Case-Shiller reports that prices were up a very stout 0.9% in December for the 20 cities it covers. The year-over-year increase in the index closed at 6.9% for 2012, the highest increase since 2006. New home sales also continue to adhere to an upward trajectory. Sales surged 15.6% to an annualized rate of 437,000 units in January, which easily beat the consensus estimate for 385,000 units. What’s more, sales could have been higher. Like with existing homes, lack of inventory appears to be retarding new-home sales growth. Monthly supply fell to 4.9 months at the current sales pace from 5.6 months in December. We’re interested to see if existing home sales gain traction in coming months. It’s no secret that inventory is scarce and sales are increasingly draining what inventory there is. That said, the pending home sales index points to higher sales, given that the number of contracts signed to purchase an existing home jumped 4.5% for February. The most encouraging news of the week, though, centered on equity. Zillow finds that fewer homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. What’s more, the improvement is significant. Zillow reports that two million borrowers were lifted above water in 2012. Looking at 2013, Zillow expects another million borrowers will find themselves above water by year’s end. This is obviously good news for the market. More homeowners with positive equity means more homes will be put up for sale, thus helping to alleviate the inventory shortage. The key to maintaining this important trend is continued job growth and a continued rise in home prices. There is one trend that wasn’t adhered to this past week, and that’s the trend in rising mortgage rates. In fact, mortgage rates across most products actually reversed course, offering borrowers a chance to lock in at a significantly lower rate. Low mortgage rates, low housing inventory, and high affordability means the trend in buyer demand will remain strong. In fact, we expect the demand trend to last through the year. Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that more demand will continue to keep prices adhering to their trend as well.

SELLERS: Vincent Herbert and Tamar Braxton
LOCATION: Encino, CA
PRICE: $3,000,000
SIZE: 7,817 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It seems we’ve been stuck out in sub- and exurban Los Angeles, CA most of the week yimmer-yammering about celebrity real estate blah blah blah. Although we’re certain some of the children wish we would, rather than shift the geographic gears we’re going to stay put instead with a discussion on the Encino, CA mansion recently put on the market for $3,000,000 and owned, as per property records, by Vincent Herbert and Tamar Braxton. That’s pronounced Tay-mar, okay?

She’s a?sassy, smart-allecky and sometimes antagonizing?R&B singer probably best known as the youngest sister of Grammy-winning songstress Toni Braxton. Missus Braxton-Herbert is, howevuh, does not live entirely in the shadow of her older sister, she’s a woman on her own showbiz trajectory who has made a record or two, sang some badass back up on Lady Gaga’s anthemic single?Born This Way?and currently stars?if that’s what one does?on the cacophonous?Braxton Family Values?reality program that was recently picked up for a 13-episode second season.

He’s a rather rotund but baby-faced, award-winning music industry executive and producer whose worked over songs for chanteuses such as Toni Braxton, Destiny’s Child, Whitney Houston and JoJo. He currently presides over Streamline Records, a division of Interscope Records and the home label for the new Madonna Lady Gaga. A pulmonary embolism?the fancy name for a blood clot in the lung?recently landed Mister Herbert in a New York City hospital after he collapsed in mid-October. He has?since returned?to Los Angeles, l’chaim.

Property records show Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herbert only purchased their Encino mansion just over two years ago in September 2009 for $2,600,000.

The pancake-flat .42-acre parcel, tucked into a leafy, not-glitzy neighborhood directly behind the Encino Commons business and entertainment district, hosts a gated mansion built in 2007 and described in current listing materials as an “Elegant & Sexy Spanish Hacienda meets Tuscan Villa.” The pastiche-y two-story pad measures in at a beefy 7,817 square feet and contains a total of 6 bedrooms and?depending on where in the listing one looks?either 5.75 or 6.5 bathrooms.

A deep, paver-stone tile driveway stretches back from the street to a three-car attached garage with contemporary frosted glass and aluminum doors. The arched front door, set into an arched doorway set into a shallow courtyard, opens into an airy, double height entrance hall finished with a poo-poo platter of not entirely harmonious materials: mottled caramel-colored (and oddly shaped) Spanish tiles on the floor; buttery yellow stucco walls in the dining room; a long arched colonnade fashioned from used bricks; a swooping curved staircase with wrought iron banisters and vibrant orange tile accents on the risers.

Formal living and dining rooms are available for guests, holidays and other moments when a person might want them but far more interior space was devoted to less formal family quarters that include a state-of-the-art 12-seat home theater/media room plus a family room with full-size wet bar that will make hooch hounds gasp with anticipation, French doors that connect to the outdoor entertainment areas, and a fireplace (unfortunately) flanked by arched and mirrored niches outfitted with matching library tables topped with sprays of white orchids. As if the all-too-ubiquitous orchids where not decoratively clich? enough, the person responsible for decorating this room visually multiplied the orchids with the massive mirrors placed where there more better be bookshelves filled with actual books and cherished mementos of the homeowner(s).

Anyhoo, we digress. Archways join the family room to the eat-in kitchen with its semi-circular breakfast nook. We’re going to ignore the white orchids in the window behind the delicious copper farmhouse sink on the far wall and instead focus on the massive, multi-purpose center island with two-stool snack counter, vegetable sink, second dishwasher and coppery granite counter top that plays off the green granite counter top that extends out for some distance on either side of the delicious copper farmhouse sink. There’s also a walk-in pantry and temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar.

Listing information explains the “master retreat” includes two over-sized walk-in closets and a “Glamorous,” mostly brown and beige en suite complete with custom tile work, glass-lined steam shower that juts our like a peninsula into the the bathroom, and a separate sunken jetted soaking tub set into a window-lined semi-circular niche.

The fully landscaped, wall/fenced, and secured grounds encompass meandering paver stone patios and walkways, a semi-permanent cabana that promotes outdoor living, a built-in barbecue center, a few free-form patches of grass, a built-in fire pit, and two waterfalls that tumble into an amoebic swimming pool with elevated circular spa. The children will note that with the touch of a remote control button a God damn rotating television pops up from a fake boulder at the water’s edge.

It’s not much of a surprise really that Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herbert have hoisted their Encino mansion on the market given that they’ve already purchased their next, much larger and far more expensive home (shown below). Property records reveal in early September (2011) Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herbert coughed up a considerable $6,900,000 to obtain an 11,747 square foot French Country-style faux-chateau perched on a low rise in the guard-gated and star-studded equestrian community of Hidden Hills, CA.

Listing information for the Herbert’s new home in Hidden Hills shows there are a total of 5 bedrooms and 6 full and 2 half bathrooms, a grand(iose) double-height entry with twin curved staircases and inlaid marble floor, formal living and dining rooms, a paneled library, colossal center island kitchen with a disturbing cornucopia of elaborately carved corbels, a wood-paneled home theater with 125-inch screen, pub/game room with hand-carved wet bar. The titanic second floor master suite encompasses a vast bedroom/sitting room with vaulted and wood-beamed ceiling, wood floors, fireplace and a wide bank of wood-framed glass doors that slide open to a private balcony. There’s als a custom-fitted walk-in closets/dressing room and a cavernous crapper with twin sinks, a plunge pool-sized jetted tub with fireplace, and a silly (and tacky), over-sized circular glass shower enclosure.

Other amenities include an elevator, safe room, a total of at least 5 fireplaces (many with elaborate carved stone mantelpieces), direct-entry garage space for four luxury cars, a large fountain in the front yard and a somewhat slim but mostly flat back yard with a petite swimming pool with raised spa surrounded by an expanse of lush green lawn, various shaded porches and patios for escaping the scorching southern California summertime sunshine, and long views over the tree tops to the rugged mountains that encircle the San Fernando Valley.

Some of Mister Herbert and Missus Braxton-Herberts’ new neighbors include Jennifer Lopez, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne who have their estate listed at $12,999,000, Melissa Etheridge, Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife and baby momma Denise Richards, former desperate housewife Nicolette Sheridan (who bought her house from Melissa Etheridge), Bruce Jenner and Kris Kardashian, and?for a few more days or weeks anyway?pop superstar Britney Spears who will soon move house from a elephantine leased mansion in Hidden Hills to a significantly smaller but still massive mansion in a guard-gated golf community in Thousand Oaks.

TRULIA

Britney Spears’ new Thousand Oaks, California mansion.

She did it again.

Frequent house-hopper?Britney Spears?is rumored to have bought a new home in Thousand Oaks, a gated community about 45 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, according to?The Real Estalker?blog and?TMZ.

The nearly 8,500-square-foot hacienda-style house has been on the market since April for $8.5 million. Although the sale hasn’t been recorded in property records, several insiders confirm that the pop star and ?X Factor? judge purchased the five-bedroom home, The Real Estalker reports.

The one-story home has a lavish entryway with arched doorways and limestone floors. The living room has a large stone fireplace and high beamed ceilings. The home has a wet bar, a walk-in wine room, a library and home theater. The master suite comes with his and her bathrooms and walk-in closets to give Spears and fiance Jason Trawick their own space.

The home sits on 1.4 acres and overlooks a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. The home has a five-car garge, plus golf cart storage. Of course, this celebrity home comes complete with an infinity pool and spa. An infinity pool appears to have no edges, so it seems to merge into the surrounding landscape or the ocean.

Spears and Trawick have most recently been living in a 10,000-square-foot rental also in Thousand Oaks, according to the real estate website?Zillow.

 

Tai Savet

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School Name?	Address	Type	Grade Span	Parent Rating

	WHITE OAK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL	31761 W VILLAGE SCH RD Westlake Village CA 91361	Public	K – 5
	WESTLAKE HILLS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL	3333 S MEDICINE BOW CT Westlake Village CA 91362	Public	K – 5
	WESTLAKE HIGH SCHOOL	100 N LAKEVIEW CANYON RD Westlake Village CA 91362	Public	9 – 12
	WESTLAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL	1571 E POTRERO RD Westlake Village CA 91361	Public	K – 5
	ST JUDE THE APOSTLE SCHOOL	32036 LINDERO CANYON RD Westlake Village CA 91361	Catholic	K – 8
	OAKS CHRISTIAN SCHOOL	31749 LA TIENDA DR Westlake Village CA 91362	Private	K – 12
	CARDEN CONEJO SCHOOL – THOUSAND OAK	975 EVENSTAR AVE Westlake Village CA 91361	Private	K – 8