Anthony Vulin III’s Thanksgiving at the Beacon House

Anthony Vulin III’s Thanksgiving at the Beacon House

I started my Thanksgiving morning in my hometown, San Pedro. I grew up in Palos Verdes but went to school in San Pedro. My father and I arrived at the Beacon House at 10:30 AM, Thanksgiving morning. It’s a tradition of ours. We had a wonderful time serving food to the homeless and to members of the Beacon House. If any one is looking for a great charity to support, I highly recommend The Beacon House of San Pedro. I had a wonderful time meeting the mayor of Redondo Beach, Mike Gin http://www.mikegin.com , and Assembly woman Betty Karnette, http://www.bettykarnette.org . Maybe I’ll see you there next year!

The Beacon House Association of San Pedro was founded in 1974 as a private non-profit California corporation, with the purpose of providing a peer-oriented, residential recovery program for men whose lives had become unmanageable due to alcoholism or addiction.
The Beacon House philosophy is that alcoholism/drug addiction is a disease which is treatable. We believe that a kind and caring home environment and a sound recovery program are essential to the recovery of many alcoholics.

The Beacon House Association of San Pedro
http://www.beaconhouseassociation.com/
1003 S. Beacon StreetSan Pedro, CA 90731
Voice: 310-514-4940Fax: 310-831-0070E-mail:
info@beaconhouseassociation.com

Psychology for Your Home: Creating the Harmonious Living

Have you ever walked into a home, hopefully not yours, and felt immediately uncomfortable? It could be because design psychology was not considered when the home was decorated.

"Design psychology helps you to create a home to support your emotional needs," says Jeanette Fisher, design psychology professor and founder of Joy to the Home.

Sounds like you need to be lying down on a couch to grasp the concept in this newly-emerging field. Regardless, of the name, the concept is changing the way people feel in their homes. The premise of design psychology is to fulfill the users' emotional needs and not just decorate based on aesthetics.

"I studied interior design at Orange Coast College years ago and then we moved to Florida and we rehabbed a big home, a 6,000-square-foot Queen Anne Victorian. After we remodeled the kitchen it didn't feel right," says Fisher.

So she went to the University of Florida and started researching interior design as she puts it, "kind of backwards."

"I took all the elements of interior design and researched how people react on a physiological and psychological level. So actually I do designs for how you feel in relation to how a design element makes you react," says Fisher.

"So you would start with what you need in a home and how you want to feel in a space and then design details to support your senses," says Fisher.

One of the biggest factors for creating moods in a home is color. Whether you're deciding what color paint to put on the walls or what furniture to use, Fisher says start with one thing in mind.

"For home makeovers you would want to start with how you want to make people feel when they first see your home. Design psychology starts at the curb because I believe that the whole home is important, not just the interior. That's why I don't like to say it's interior design; it's residential design," says Fisher.

The psychology behind determining what paint to put on your walls is a colorful process; certain colors typically create very specific feelings for the majority of people. The mood you convey often depends on how the color is used.

For instance, painting an entire room red can make people feel anxious and can even elevate blood pressure. Yet using red as an accent in a room can be an attention grabber, make people lose track of time and even stimulate their appetite. Red, of course, is symbolic of love, heat, fire and passion.

Various shades of green symbolize nature and are becoming increasingly popular in home décor. Green is believed to be an easy color on the eye, provoking a neutral effect on the nervous system; think of the "green rooms" that are designed for people who are waiting to appear on television. Dark greens typically represent wealth and masculinity, while an olive green represents peace.

Some colors, such as bright yellow, should be used very sparingly. Researchers claim it's not an easy color on the eye. An entire room in yellow is fatiguing and can cause babies to cry and adults to become irritable. However, if used as an accent it can create a warm, vibrant, alert mood.

Before you paint, be sure to test out your emotional response to various colors. See if the feeling you get from viewing the colors matches the mood you wish to create for a particular room.

For more information on design psychology visit joytothehome.com.

Written by Phoebe Chongchua
November 21, 2005

Congratulations!

Anthony Vulin has been featured on BlogPulse this week at #28 as one of the BIGGEST MOVERS in the blogosphere. Check it out here: http://www.blogpulse.com/05_10_19/keyPeople.html

BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. Blogs, a term that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on the Internet. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs. BlogPulse is brought to you by Intelliseek.

Deborah Gibson Concert

Hey everyone...

Our client Deborah Gibson has a concert comming up that I thought you all might be interested in! I am going to be there, she is a great preformer! Check her out at www.deborah-gibson.com for more details!

Congratulations!

Over the weekend Anthony Vulin was elected to the board of the Lesbian and Gay Chamber of Commerce. Check out their website here: http://www.balaweb.org/

The Organizing LA Blog

Organizing LA is a very cool BLOG on the web about tips & tactics to organize your life & environment! Our friend Professional Organizer John Trosko discusses all sorts of trends and tips on organization that I feel would be great for everyone to check out. ALSO today he posted about a house in Mar Vista with a great movie tour of the home... John proclaims it is a "professional organizers dream". Check out the tour and his BLOG... Definitely one of our favorites!

http://www.organizingla.blogs.com/

organizing LA article

Finding and Keeping that Second Home in Mexico

In 2003, the National Association of Real Estate Editors held its spring conference in San Diego. That conference included a bus trip southeast of the central core of Tijuana, Mexico, where Casas Geo, one of Mexico's largest residential developers, was building El Dorado, a 4,500-unit condominium project.

For $30,000 U.S., a buyer could get a 460-square-foot, three-room condo with the basics: overhead light and electrical outlet in every room, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

Casas Geo's target buyer -- a worker in a factory owned by a multinational corporation -- earned $550 to $1,100 a month. The typical monthly payment on a $23,000 mortgage is $150.
At the same time Casas Geo and other residential developers have been working overtime to bridge the affordable housing gap for Mexico's citizens, Americans began looking south of the border for a less-expensive warm-weather retirement than was possible in Florida or California.
What started as a trickle has turned into a flood, with a large percentage of the one million Americans who are buying second home in other countries heading to Mexico, not only Baja California, but Bahia de Banderas and Manzanilla and a number of other destinations.
Until about six years, it was easier and safer buying property almost anywhere else. There wasn't much information available to buyers, who tended to have to take the word of often unscrupulous real estate agents and developers, resulting in well-publicized cases in which Americans lost their money.

What has made ownership easier, according to the authors of Cashing In On A Second Home in Mexico (Crabman Publishing, $19.95) is that the Mexican market has become more accommodating to buyers north of the border.

Mexico's real estate markets have changed, real estate agents have developed a mindset favoring security and disclosure for purchasers and American buyers have become much better informed and educated," say veteran real estate writer and radio host Tom Kelly and Mitch Creekmore of Stewart International, a recognized expert in on Mexican property.

The changes have been brought about primarily by the Mexican dependence on tourism and foreign investment in real estate, Kelly and Creekmore say. Real estate deals have become more transparent, shifting from "that's the way we do business here" to using extended title searches, issuances of commitments for title insurance, third party escrow and closing rights, "and ultimately, title insurance policies guaranteeing one's right of ownership, whether fee simple in Mexico's interior regions or entitlement via the bank trust or a Mexican corporation for foreign purchases in a restricted zone."

The two men also think we've gotten smarter as buyers, owing to how important real estate is to our financial health and that of the economy.

Why is Mexico so attractive? Life can be laid back and relatively inexpensive. On the back jacket of the book, the authors quote AARP the Magazine: "For $600 a month, retirees can live in a three-bedroom home, with a gardener. For a cool thousand … well, you won't believe it."
But although buying in Mexico is becoming easier, the nuances aren't all that obvious. You may be able to speak high-school Spanish, but, as with English, words can have more than one meaning, and those meanings can reflect the effects of the culture.

That's why this book is as important to the first-time American second-home buyer as the Boy Scout Manual is to the tenderfoot.

Take the word "ejido," which means "communal." The ejido is an old communal farm formed when farmers in every Mexican village were given property to form a co-op. Under the Mexican constitution, the ejido is worked by everyone and owned by no one, which means that a foreign buyer cannot own it because the individuals who have a beneficiary interest in the land can't legally sell it.

A constitutional amendment allows the ejido to be converted to private land for sale that would benefit all of the users, or ejidatarios. The problems for American buyers occur when an ejido that hasn't been privatized properly is sold. The buyer has simply bought property that shouldn't have been sold in the first place, and the investment is lost.
Kelly and Creekmore guide you through the nuances of ejidos and other legalities peculiar to Mexican real estate investments. They also present real life experiences of American buyers, both good and bad, and serve as tour guides to popular destinations to help you make an educated decision.
It's true that much of this information can be found on the Internet. The difference is, of course, that Kelly and Creekmore have the kind of expertise that will help you sift through all of that information and make the kind of informed decision that will allow you to make a safe and sane investment in Mexican real estate..

After all, it is your money and you've worked hard for it. Spending $19.95 to protect your hard-earned cash is certainly worth it.

Related Articles:

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And the Survey Shows -- Everything Is Okay

Written by Al Heavens
November 10, 2005

The Millennium Team is in the Press Again

The Millennium Team has been featured in a very hilarious article on Curbed...

Check it out: LA Curbed

JUST REDUCED and OPEN SUNDAY!

Just Reduced to $749,000

Open Sunday from 1-4 PM

Recently remodeled spanish style home in Silverlake area. 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Large Corner lot. Large Kitchen and dining room. Laundry room. New windows and stucco. PRICED TO SELL!!! New lawn and sprinklers are installed. Close to Sunset Junction area! Zoned LARD1.5 Recently appraised at $830,000!!! Open Sunday 1-4 PM!

More Pictures at TheMillenniumTeam.com

Join the Game, But Know the Real Estate Investing Rules

It seems like the dream job -- buy real estate, sit on it until the price goes up enough and then sell it off and walk away with a nice profit. The frenzied market we've been experiencing is luring many people to invest their hard-earned cash in the business of real estate.

While prices soar in many cities, the vision of an overnight success is dancing in new investors' heads. The idea of making a quick buck is drawing wannabee investors to real estate seminars, the internet, open houses, and cities all over the country where cheap property can be snatched up.

In New Orleans, speculators, both experienced and inexperienced, are hoping to turn a profit by purchasing land before the redevelopment of the city begins.

"If you had a crystal ball you could become a millionaire because it could be something that will have phenomenal windfalls or it could be something that will never come to fruition," says radio host Norm Bour of The Real Estate and Finance Show.

An unrealistic expectation is a problem that causes many newbie investors to decide to give up on real estate before they have a chance to turn a profit. They often think that buying a fixer-upper will be an easy project to take on and then turn around and sell. Sometimes that's the case, but often there are many challenges that beginning investors don't consider. Cabool, Missouri resident, Matt Peterson, his brother-in-law and father-in-law recently finished fixing up a foreclosure home they purchased in Ava, Missouri.

"I had built my house, my father-in-law had built his, and my brother-in-law had built his. We thought we could go in and fix this up a little bit, but it wasn't that easy," says Peterson.
Peterson says it took them longer than expected -- about six months to finish work on the 4,500-square-foot house that is more than 100 years old.

Now, in hindsight, Peterson says he'd do a little more research before buying a property and he'd consider using experts to get the job done.

"I would look a little closer at the property and the potential it had for profit and factor in contracting all the work out. I mean I can do some of it but with the job that I have now, I don't have the ability to work five days a week on a house [when] the payoff comes later when we sell the house. I need to be able to support my family. I would look at trying to contract it all out if I were to do it again," says Peterson.

He also says that he'd try to have a buyer in mind for the property. The property that he just finished has still not sold, although it is being rented with a rent-to-own agreement.

"[I would] look immediately to sell; maybe have a buyer in mind and make sure that he has the financing lined up beforehand. We kind of had trouble with that on this project. [The tenants] said they wanted to buy the house but they haven't been able to secure the financing so they're still renting," says Peterson.

Real estate attorney and author, William Bronchick says common sense and education are the most important tools in real estate investing.

"J Bronchick says there are three basic tips that will help beginner investors not lose money. First he says, when deciding what property to buy, go with a single-family home.

"Single family homes tend to be pretty hands-off and the tenants tend to be a little more responsible than the apartment type tenants," says Bronchick.

His second tip is to buy houses that are slightly below the median price because that market tends to be less volatile.

"Let's say the median price in the city is $250,000, if you look at $350,000 or $450,000 houses, those are the people who are middle class, gainfully employed, white- collar people," says Bronchick.

But the people living in $200,000 homes and under are the working-class people who typically make $10 to $15 per hour. If there was a job-related market crash, the higher income families might be forced to take a step down in house size; so there is typically a good pool of renters for the slightly-below-median-housing market even in a challenged economy.

The lower income bracket usually can find work.

"There are always jobs for those people. If they can't wait tables they'll get a job doing something else; so there is always going to be an income for those people in almost any market," says Bronchick.

His third tip is to buy in major metropolitan areas rather than purchasing property in undeveloped, suburbs or vacation areas. Bronchick says population trends show that people are looking to be in cities and areas that are centrally located and developed, especially because of the rising gas prices.

Related Articles:
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Written by Phoebe Chongchua
November 7, 2005

Pending Home Sales Index Close to Recordby NAR

WASHINGTON (November 3, 2005) – Pending home sales, a leading indicator for the housing sector, eased slightly but is at the second highest level on record, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

The Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in September, slipped 0.3 percent to a reading of 128.8 from a record of 129.2 in August, and is 3.3 percent higher than September 2004.

The index is derived from pending sales of existing homes. A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed; pending home sales typically are finalized within one or two months of signing.

David Lereah, NAR's chief economist, said the index shows a lot of momentum. "We're still seeing a post-Katrina boost in home sales activity, where the needs of displaced residents are supplementing a fundamentally strong market," he said. "Aside from this temporary lift, the market is entering a period of transition in which we will see a somewhat slower but more sustainable pace of home sales -- a period that is expected to be historically healthy. This will help to create a better balance between home buyer and sellers, so price appreciation should be cooler as well."

View PHS Index here

Many post-Katrina sales in the region surrounding the disaster zone were bulk sales by companies that were obtaining housing for employees; some of those sales closed quickly in September with others expected to be recorded in data for October and November.
An index of 100 is equal to the average level of contract activity during 2001, the first year to be examined. 2001 was the first of four consecutive record years for existing-home sales, with activity in that year being fairly close to the higher level of home sales projected for the coming decade relative to norms during the mid-1990s. A Pending Home Sales Index of 100 coincides with a historically high level of home sales.

Regionally, the highest PHSI was in the South where the index slipped 1.6 percent in September to 139.1 from a record in August, and was 6.3 percent higher than September 2004. In the Northeast, the index rose 1.8 percent to 110.4 in September and was 0.8 percent above a year ago. The Midwest index rose 0.3 percent to 119.7 in September, and was 0.4 percent below September 2004. The index in the West held even at a level of 136.7, and was 3.6 higher than a year ago.

The National Association of Realtors®, "The Voice for Real Estate," is America's largest trade association, representing more than 1.2 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

Published: November 4, 2005

Real Estate Market Conditions for Los Angeles, November 2005

Wow, what a change the market has taken in Los Angeles in recent weeks. Its been long overdue. The market in LA is finally a "normal market". The busy Summer season is over and the Winter Holidays are quickly approaching. Homes are not selling in less then 30 days any more. The average for a single family home is about 90 days now. On the other hand, condos are selling in less than 45 days. With the recent rise of mortgage rates to about 6.25% for a 30 year fixed, from about 5.75% a few weeks ago, the purchasing power of buyers have gone down almost 10%. That's huge! Not only will the Los Angeles real estate market have to adjust to this change, but all real estate markets will. I think this type of market is going to be around for the next year or so, partly because mortgage rates are expected to hit about 7% by the end of next year. I still think if you had to say if it was a buyer's or seller's market, I would call it a seller's market. Prices are still high but are slightly negotiable now. Please feel free to write me and The Millennium Team at info@TheMillenniumTeam.com For more info about the LA market and the listings that I am working on, please visit us at www.TheMillenniumTeam.com As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to working with you one day! Let your friends know about me as well! Anthony Vulin III www.LARealtorToTheStars.com.