Dan's Bucks County Real Estate Blog

Real estate is expensive in Bucks and Montgomery counties, but nothing like this deal. A company called the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm that owns and manages office buildings, is buying Equity Office Properties Trust in what could be one of the biggest real estate deals in history. Blackstone is paying $36 billion for Equity Office and will turn it into a private real estate investment trust.

Equity Office owns 590 buildings in major metropolitan areas, including the Verizon buidling on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. The deal is expected to be completed early next year. I wonder what the commission is on a $36 billion deal?

I heard from a friend whose brother is looking to buy a house, but he has decided to wait until the spring. That's a bad move. Here's why.

Sellers who have their houses on the market at this time of year are desperate. If they don't sell now, their house is likely to sit until the end of the winter. That makes them highly motivated to sell, which means anyone's brother could get a great deal.

Second, the rates for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage have dipped to under 6
percent. He could probably get a 5.75 loan right now, possibly a bit lower. If he waits until the spring, there is no telling what the rates will be. A disaster, either political or natural, could affect interest rates and push them back up over 6.5 percent.

And finally, inventory is up and demand is down at this time of year. If he waits until March or April, demand will increase and inventory could possibly decrease. He will be competing with a lot more buyers than there are right now.

Mortgage rates are going down. In the last week, interest rates for many 30 year fixed rate mortgages dropped to under 6 percent. That's a pretty good deal. Right now, the trend in rates is downward, so they could be going even lower.

Sometimes buyers get good vibrations when they go into a house. Sometimes they get the opposite. I was working with a woman who went into a 150 year-old farmhouse in Bucks County and almost immediately said she did not feel well. She could not put her finger on just what was botheringher, but it made her feel uncomfortable, both physically and mentally.After just a very brief time inside the house, she said she had to get out, so we left. Once outside, she said she felt better. After she got back in the car, I walked over to the seller and told her that my buyer had felt very uncomfortable inside the house, as though something bad had happened there and poisoned the atmosphere inside. The woman gave me the strangest look, part anger and part surprise, almost a how-the-hell-did-she-know-that look. It was kind of a strange experience.

When I started this blog I vowed that I would never go more than a week without posting something, and ideally I would write something every two or three days. But that has not happened. It has been nearly four weeks since I last wrote. But as I said in the headline, I've got a good excuse.

On Saturday morning, Oct. 21, my wife Meg was getting our son up. We have bunk beds, so she climbed two rungs of the ladder to awaken him. As she was getting down, she either turned awkwardly and lost her balance or slipped and fell. She landed on the side of her hip. When the pain did not subside after an hour or so, we went to the hospital. And X-ray revealed a broken hip. Meg had surgery later that day to insert three screws to connect the bones.

It has been three pretty hectic weeks since then. Meg is walking with crutches and getting better every day. She returned to work last Monday and feels pretty good. She goes back to the surgeon for the second time in December and might be able to use a cane by then. So all in all, she's doing pretty well, for which I am very thankful.

I will keep you posted.