The Donald in Hooterville

Can you picture Donald Trump in a "Petticoat Junction" second-home mecca in North Carolina's Blue Ridge mountains? Well, believe it. The Wall Street Journal reports that "two large residential projects partly financed by the New York developer's mortgage company, particularly a luxury condominium that could cast a shadow over the turn-of-the-century courthouse" is giving residents of Hendersonville fits.

Categories: NorthCarolina, Hendersonville

Your Best Market Cohort is 78 Million Strong

Brokers please note: In case you didn't know this before, boomers are house-crazy.

The latest Harris Interactive survey shows that 25 percent of boomers own one or more other kinds of real estate in addition to a primary residence: 13 percent own land; 8 percent own rental property; 7 percent, a vacation home or seasonally occupied property; 2 percent, commercial real estate; and 3 percent, some other kind of real estate.

Why Is A New Web Site News?

A lot of media outlets have picked up a press release trumpeting HomeAway.com, a site that allows visitors to search more than 60,000 homes across 90 countries. Why is that hot news? It isn't really, except for the fact that HomeAway unites several leading sites where vacation rentals can be found both within the U.S. and abroad, including CyberRentals.com, which boasts 20,000 listings all by itself.

Breaking Ground on "Affordable" Ski Condos

If I wanted another Colorado vacation condo in the mountains, and especially if I wanted an easy trip from Denver, I'd run, not walk, to learn about the new buildings at Winter Park that Intrawest breaks ground on today.

Fraser Crossing and Founders Point will have 194 units. Prices: from about $250,000 to $1 million. About $50 million worth of the units have sold, according to the resort.

A local housing official says the areas should "attract more of a market that is middle class rather than just exclusive."

Base Metal, Platinum Real Estate

Once upon a time, Basalt was a forgotten stepsister of glitzy Aspen in Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley. Now, Basalt is truly the new Aspen.

"The red-hot real estate market has sent the median price of single family homes for sale in and around Basalt above the $1 million barrier, according to an article about an analysis done by broker Wendy Lucas in The Aspen Times.


The stats: median price of the 27 single-family homes that sold in and around Basalt through mid-May was $695,000. The median price of 19 homes currently under contract in that same area is $899,000. The median asking price for the 19 homes currently listed for sale is $1,195,000."

Basalt is about a half hour's drive from Aspen.

Battle Mountain May Drive Real Estate near Vail

"Local real estate experts suspect the development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain" not far from Vail, Colorado, "might drive up property values in Minturn," the town at the base of the proposed resort, according to a story in the Vail Daily. But the paper notes that earlier resorts developed by the same Ginn Company did not do much for real estate prices Florida and North Carolina.

You Paid Too Much

If you just bought a second home in Naples, Fla. you probably paid nearly double what the property is really worth.

A Barron's study based on info from National City, a Cleveland banking and mortgage outfit, says homes there are overvalued by 96 %. Second on the list is Port St. Lucie/Fort Pierce, Fla. Top 10 overvalued cities include Tucson, Prescott and Phoenix in Arizona; Bend, Ore.; Napa, Calif.; Barnstable, Mass.; and Ocean City and Atlantic City, N.J.