AUGUST 2008 - Total Condos Sold: $14,828,500 ($10,997,500) CONDOS: () Previous Month Figures Median Price: $544,500 ($421,000)  Average Selling Price: $617,854 ($508,928) Average List Price: $644,579 ($533,604) Therefore, Average Sales Price was 95.9% (95.3%) of List Price Lowest Price Condo Sold: $370,000($270,000) Highest Price Condo Sold: $1,525,000 ($905,000) Number of Listings Sold: 24 (21) MEDIAN SALES PRICES: August 2008: $544,500 July 2008: $421,000 June 2008: $585,000 May 2008 - $519,000 April 2008 - $516,500 March 2008 - $615,000 February 2008 - $618,250 January 2008 - $620,000 For further information, please contact:  Stewart Penn - Realtor/Broker - " West Hollywood Condo Specialist" 09/01/2008

Not many people know this, but West Hollywood boasts some of the greatest entertainment in the Nation. The area has long been called the Creative City of California. West Hollywood has also been the center stage for Music, Television and Film industries. When you're in West Hollywood, and want some great entertainment, be sure to visit Sunset Strip where you will find many great activities going on year-round. Art Galleries are another hot spot to visit for entertainment. You will find some of the best dance, festivals, song, and gatherings in West Hollywood, California. Looking for a great community to buy a home? You will find one in West Hollywood, for sure. 09/01/2008

Sprinkles Cupcakes - If you have a sweet tooth, then you'll love Sprinkles - located at 9635 Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, 90210 (Adjacent to West Hollywood). These are fantastically delicious cupcakes freshly baked throughout the day and made with sweet cream butter. Adults, teenagers and children can be seen lining up on the sidewalk outside the small store in Beverly Hills, waiting to get their "fix" of this extremely indulgent treat. They have a great selection of flavors, including chocolate, ginger lemon, mocha, chai latte, orange, pumpkin and red velvet. At $3.25 each ($36 for a dozen) they're not cheap - but they are definitely delicious and I highly recommend them! I took a box of these goodies to a sit down dinner party(something different), and they were the hit of the ev... 08/26/2008

There's a new Frozen Yogurt sensation that began in a small shop in West Hollywood and has now grown to be an overwhelming success throughout Los Angeles - it's called Pinkberry. Pinkberry is a simple yet extremely delicious product: basic frozen yogurt served with toppings of your choice. At first they only served the "original" flavor, a natural slightly sour yogurt and green tea, but have recently coffee as well. The choice of toppings include fruits like strawberry, pineapple, and kiwi fruit, and other toppings include chocolate chips, shaved almonds, granola and coco pebbles. The yogurt is made with with skim milk and non-fat yogurt with active and live cultures (that may not sound appealing but apparently it's healthy for you). Pinkberry is a great concept and there's often lines ... 08/26/2008

The City of West Hollywood, California is being awarded the "Outstanding Innovation in Green Community Planning" award for its Green Building Program. Since West Hollywood beat out every other community in the state, it has qualified for consideration in the National American Planning Association awards program. Now you have it. West Hollywood, California is the best community in the state to buy or build a green home, and to live in a green community. The whole city is going green. Many other communities across the state and the nation are taking tips from West Hollywood, so we must be doing something very right. If green is what you want, green is what you'll get when you come to West Hollywood. Not only is West Hollywood a great place to live because it is going green, it is also gre... 08/25/2008

While watching TV this evening I saw a commercial that really grabbed my attention - A new car that only emits water vapor into the air that we breathe. This sounded like some futuristic car so I went online and discovered that Honda has already started leasing this new vehicle, the Honda FXC Clarity - and a few owners have even taken delivery of their cars. Vehicles that use hydrogen with fuel cell technology are the cleanest around because they emit only water vapor into the air we breathe. These cars simply do not pollute. They can also use hydrogen from domestic energy sources, reducing our dependence on oil. And driving fuel cell vehicles significantly reduces the amount of carbon dioxide emissions, helping to slow the increase in greenhouse gases - Honda Website How does it work? ... 08/24/2008

$150 Million is a huge price for a house, but then we're talking about the biggest home in Los Angeles - Candy Spelling's Holmby Hills Mansion that she and her late husband, TV mogul Aaron Spelling, completed in 1991 at a cost of $47 Million. The enormous house is over 56,000 large and has 123 rooms. Take a peek into the house with the CBS News video. Watch CBS Videos Online As blogged about a month ago, Candy Spelling is downsizing to a 16,000 sq ft condo in Century City, for which she reportedly paid a record breaking $47 Million. 08/24/2008

The Melrose Place Farmer's Market (on Melrose Place, between La Cienega Blvd and Orlando Ave) is open every Sunday from 10am-2pm. The small and unhurried open-air market is situated in a trendy area surrounded by designer stores like Marc Jacobs, Diesel, and antique stores. Shoppers can buy California Certified Produce and also find local artisans, crafters and food vendors. Their Mission Statement sums it up best: " We strive to create opportunities to educate the general public on the many social, health and economic benefits of eating locally grown food. We work to create an atmosphere that enables social connections and community bonds between farmer and urban dweller". 08/22/2008

While reading through The Huffington Post today, I saw something that I hadn't heard about before: Sustainable wooden keycards for hotel rooms. What a brilliantly simple idea. "Sustainable Cards LLC of Boulder has donated more than 70,000 wood hotel key cards to use at hotels throughout the Denver area" - Denver Business Journal. I checked their website and I love their ideas: sustainable gift cards, membership cards, and hotel key cards. This reminds me to "never overlook the obvious" .... and "not seeing the wood for the trees". 08/21/2008

A few years ago I was showing a condo to a buyer (an older gentleman) who seemed to like the place. He asked how much it was listed for and I replied $315,000. The buyer scratched his head and mumbled that for $350,000 he wasn't interested ... besides, the place was too dark. I realized he hadn't heard me correctly and repeated that the price was only $315,000 and not $350,000. Suddenly his attitude changed, and he took another careful look. He bought the condo. Apparently at the lower price the condo looked a lot lighter and brighter. Similarly when I showed a $740,00 house to a prospective buyer, he wasn't interested because he could hear freeway noice in the background. When I finally reduced the price to $675,000, the freeway noise disappeared and the house became quiet and peaceful... 08/21/2008

On 6/17/08 I blogged that "John McCain cannot use a PC or a MAC - should he be President?". I received a lot of feedback from fellow ActiveRainers, some of whom did not however, see the broader picture intended by my blog. Obviously McCain has many staffers who would handle any aspect requiring the use of a computer - rather, I was intending to demonstrate just how out-of-touch the man really is. I would have imagined that anyone running for one of the most powerful and influential positions in the world, would at least have had the curiosity to explore the internet. Not the case with McCain. This week McCain was asked how many homes he and wife owned, and his reply was astounding: "I think - I'll have my staff get to you ... It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you." Did he ... 08/21/2008

An interesting article on CNN Money today claimed that "bank's prime loan delinquencies are on the rise. As of June 30, 2.19% of the prime loans issued by WaMu in 2007 were already delinquent, compared with 1.40% of prime loans issued in 2005". So it appears that the bank's nightmare of delinquencies are not over by a long shot. And most banks are needing to shore up their capital reserves. yet the banks seem to be somewhat "schizophrenic" in how they're managing their business. Let me explain my thoughts with this example: Merrill Lynch sold a $30.6 Billion portfolio of mortgage debt for 22 cents on the dollar yet only received $1.7 Billion in cash, lending the Buyer the balance of the Purchase Price. Merill Lynch sold it's 20% stake in Bloomberg for $4.43 Billion, yet only received $1... 08/20/2008

Many potential new homebuyers are so worried about high gas prices and a down real estate market, they are holding off on buying a new home. What they don't realize is now is the best time to buy. Interest rates are low and home values have dropped, so you can expect to get an awesome deal on almost any home you want to buy. And, to make the deal even sweeter, West Hollywood home builders are throwing in extras. Many new homebuilders in West Hollywood have gone green, and now many are also offering a free green car when you buy a green home. You can buy a new green home, get a free green car, and help our planet, all at the same time. So, if you're looking to relocate, the choice is clear. Come see for yourself just how great West Hollywood, California real estate is. 08/18/2008

"Energy is neither created nor destroyed - but transferred from one form to another". This is one of the laws of Science. So the other day while cycling on a stationery bike at the gym, I started thinking about all the energy that's generated by the gym-members during their workouts. I started thinking about "spinning classes" and wondered what happened to all the calories that were being burned up. Where did they go? Was all the effort of the cyclists for nothing? Maybe somehow the energy used could be stored up for use at a later stage; the concept was much like "winding up a spring" that could be released for a specific purpose later on. If a cyclist generates enough power to work a bicylce light, couldn't the power generated by cyclists on stationery bikes be used for some other pra... 08/14/2008

I recently Blogged about snail mail "Junk Mail' and received a great comment from fellow ActiveRainer - Amanda Hendershot -  about an online service that can stop catalogues from being mailed to you. The service is called Catalog Choice and by using this service you can arrange to have unwanted mailings stopped. For those vendors that don't respond to this service, the site supplies you with contact numbers to call to manually arrange to stop mailings. The bottom line is that Catalog Choice "is an easy, free service that allows you to decline unwanted catalogs, reducing the number of catalogs in your mailbox and the number of trees that get sent to the paper mill". 08/14/2008

With more and more people becoming sensitive to protecting the environment and reducing wastage, I am surprized at the continued use by marketing companies of  snail-mail "junk mail".  Each day when I check my mailbox (and I'm referring to my U.S. Postal mailbox), I find it crammed with store catalogues, credit card offers and pages and pages of advertisements. I never read the stuff, but simply trash it. I asked the mailman if it's a nuisance for him to keep stuffing mailboxes with this junk - but to my surprise he said he's thankful for this mail because it helps to pay his salary (and bonuses) and the staff at the post office. As part of my comprehensive marketing campaign I used to send mailings to all addresses in my "farm" - but I finally decided that the expense of the postcards ... 08/14/2008

For anyone that has ever served as a Director on the Board of a Homeowowners Association you will know that managing the affairs of an HOA is not an easy task. Each Director has their own ideas and personal way of approaching matters and often different Directors have their own Agenda for what needs to happen. Individual personalities and experiences don't always make for an easy mix and often there are conflicts in management styles. While searching the internet I came across this "Management Flowchart" which adds a humurous approach and even in its joking way, does make a few good points - Enjoy!  08/12/2008

As the Credit Crisis continues, banks have significantly tightened their lending criteria. It makes perfectly good business sense for Lenders to accurately and thoroughly check the credit-worthiness of prospective borrowers (finally) -  but it now seems like there is over-kill. Today I heard of a prospective buyer with respectable credit, verifiable income and a reasonable down-payment who was turned down for a mortgage because his FICO score was 2 points lower than the bank's official acceptable threshold. We're supposedly dealing with commerical enterprises that makes business decisions on merit - not some automated bureacratic machine - or are we? Consumers can purchase their own Credit Reports and Scores, but often these scores differ from the scores lenders use. Isn't it time that ... 08/07/2008

Do you or your clients have a "Home Equity Line of Credit" (HELOC)? As national house prices continue to decline from the heady records reached during the housing boom, Banks have tightened their lending criteria for new loans. That is a good thing, within reason. Buyers can no longer purchase homes with no-money down. Another good thing, within reason. But what about those proprty owners who have HELOC's? Many families had budgeted to use those funds for schooling, remodelling their properties, or possibly consolidating their debt. I've had several clients call me to say their lender had "frozen" their HELOC. While it makes sense for the banks to limit their exposure to the value of the underlying property, is it fair that they can suddenly "pull the rug" from under their clients? It's... 08/06/2008

This past weekend I wrote a Blog about "Bank owned properties - Trying to get an offer considered". Several comments from other Realtors confirmed the frustrations I was experiencing in trying to close a deal on a bank owned property. So I decided to determine exactly why the Listing Agent for this particular bank owned property is so slow to respond to me as a Buyer's Agents, if at all. I ran a search on The CLAW MLS to see how many listings the particular agent I was trying to deal with had as "Active" Listings. To my amazement she had 181 properties listed under her MLS account. Of these 181 properties it appeared that 4 were privately owned homes (ranging in price from $1,295,000 - $6,795,000) and the other 177 active properties were  Bank owned foreclosures (ranging in price from $... 08/04/2008