The legally blind billionaire, Steve Wynn has put his 3,500 square foot apartment on the market for a paltry sum of $25,000,000. With 2 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, master bedroom, formal dining room and library, with a re-design that created two luxurious his and her bathrooms.
Located on the seventh floor on Fifth Avenue, they bought it in 2001 for about $7,000,000. They must think that real estate values have increased more than three fold since they bought it. It’s too bad that the Las Vegas based casino king Steve Wynn may soon be divorcing his wife Elaine and has found someone else.
Previous reports reveal that in July of 2005 the Wynn’s sold their 12,162 square foot mansion located on 4.6 acres in the Shadow Creek Golf Course for around $15,500,000 and then bought a private villa at the Wynn Las Vegas. However, there are six private villas at the Wynn Las Vegas not available to the public and recent reports indicate one is undergoing a renovation. Thought on that is that Steve Wynn is having it being remodeled for his new home.
My name is Zachery, I’m a Shetland Sheepdog and I’m also known as a Sheltie. I am small because I’m just the right size for my native country the Shetland Islands. I don’t like to brag, but I’m one of the smartest dogs on earth, well, not quite, but I’m sixth from the top of dog breeds when it comes to intelligence.
Some of my best friends, beside my owners Christie and Amanda, are the two cats in my house. My owners play silly games with me, taking a red laser light and shining it all over the place. I chase the laser light just to please them, and also because they don’t own any sheep for me to chase. You know, I just love to chase and herd things, so this is the closest I can come to doing that in the house I live in.
I’m getting up in age now, so I sleep a lot and go for short walks. However, in my retirement, I really would like to have for a ranch style dog house in the country. I also want some acreage with a flock of sheep so I can show my stuff and get some exercise. I’m sure Angel can find something for me.
This is just what I’m looking for!
Written by Christie O’Dell. Christie is my daughter and a school teacher. Amanda is my grand-daughter.
Send us a picture of your dog and a little story about your dog and we’ll publish it
Selling a home fast in today’s market is somewhat of a challenge. Here are six ways to expedite a sale.
1. Cut the asking price to 10 percent to 15 percent below what comparable properties in the neighborhood are selling for. Pricing your home at current market price in a declining market is almost a guarantee that your home will not sell.
2. Spruce up the outside. First impressions, like a first date, make or break a sale. Update the landscaping. Power-wash the exterior and paint the door.
3. Spruce up the inside. Store all your nick-knacks. Get rid any clutter, make the inside a model home. Stage the home so people coming to view your home can make their own impression of the home, not your motifs. Examples, updated light fixtures and carpet, current paint colors, slipcovers for dated furniture.
4. Appeal to first-time buyers. Advertise on younger consumers’ favorite Web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Hire a photographer to shoot the house with a wide-angle lens so the rooms look bigger in online photos. We offer this service to all of our clients free of charge, including taking a video of your home to go onto YouTube and post your home on 32 websites.
5. Price the house in the lower end of the range. A $299,000 house is in the high end of the $250,000 to $300,000 range but a $301,000 home is in the low-end of the $300,000 to $400,000 range.
6. Do what you can to make the deal close quickly. Be ready to move, offer to pay part of the closing costs, and/or throw in a year’s worth of association fees.
What has been your experience in selling a home quickly? Let me know.
Picture courtesy of Camp Far West Lake Campgrounds
Camp Far West Phone Number (530) 633-0803
Camp Far West Reservoir also called Camp Far West Lake, is located at the junction of Placer, Nevada and Yuba counties. Both Beale Air Force Base and the Spenceville Wildlife Area lay directly to the north of the lake. The lake’s location makes it easily accessible by coming from Nevada City, Grass Valley and Western Nevada County along with Sacramento, Roseville or the Yuba City/Marysville area.
Camp Far West’s 185 foot high earth and rock dam was completed in 1963 as part of the Central Valley Water Project impounding water from both the Bear River and Rock Creek. The dam was built for the purpose of flood control and irrigation, but has proven to be a boon for anglers and recreational boaters in the years since.
Camp Far West is situated at an elevation of 280 feet. It is a fairly large lake, impounding 104,500 acre feet of water when at full capacity with a surface area of 2,000 acres and 29 miles of shoreline. The lake got its name from a gold rush era immigrant camp that was located just downstream from the present day dam site. Since it was the last camp on the immigrant trail before the 49ers coming from the east reached the Sacramento Valley, it was dubbed, Camp Far West.
In the spring when the lake is full, the hills are green and the oak trees lining the shoreline are covered with budding leaves, the lake is quite beautiful. In the fall when the water level is drawn down 60 feet or more, the grass is parched and the leaves have fallen, the visual impact isn’t quite as awe inspiring, but the camping and recreation can be just as good as it is early in the year, plus crowds are typically very light during the fall.
Fishes in the lake include largemouth and smallmouth bass, black bass, crappie, catfish, brown trout and striped bass.
Availability: The North Shore is open year-around. The South Shore is open mid-May to September.
Camping and Lodging: Camping facilities and a store are available at the lake. There are 70 campsites on the North Shore and 8 RV hookups. There are 67 campsites on the South Shore and no RV hookups.
Boat Launching: The North Shore and South Shore each has a boat launch ramp and mini marts. The mini marts also include tackle and bait.
Activities: Swimming, boating, water skiing, jet skiing, hiking, biking, fishing and horseback riding
Reservations and Fees: Camp Far West Lake (916) 408-5037 or (530) 633-0803
The Canadian’s have increased their investment in the United States from 11 percent in 2007 to 23.5 percent in 2008, making Canada the largest foreign real estate investor in the U.S. according to the National Association of Realtors®
The strong attraction for the Canadians is that the Canadian “loonie” is at par with the U.S. dollar for the first time since 1976, making this the best exchange rate in more than thirty years. So with property values having fallen so plummeted in the U.S. it is a perfect time to buy.
“The double whammy of falling U.S. real estate prices and a rising Canadian loonie has created a once-in-a-lifetime bargain for Canadians looking for property in the U.S. Sunbelt,” said Bank of Montreal Chief Economist Sherry Cooper. “I love the Canadian dollar at parity. We are truly richer, as the money we earn and the money we invest is worth more.”
“When (the Canadian dollar) hit a dollar ten, it really created a real buzz for Canadians, not only those looking to buy second homes, but we’re also seeing it from buying purely from an investment standpoint,” he said.
The National Association of Realtors reports that 64.4 percent of Canadian buyers plan to use their U.S. homes for vacation purposes.
On average, foreign purchasers plan to stay in their U.S. property 2.6 months of the year. A third intends to use their U.S. home a total of three to six months.
LaVoie, sums it up, “Foreign investment has an undeniable presence in the U.S. real estate market, especially here in Arizona. Opportunities are abundant. Now is the time to buy and our Canadian friends clearly recognize this. For them, this is the most opportune time to invest.”
I think if you have the money, it’s a buying opportunity of a lifetime. Do you think it’s a good time to buy real estate?
Paul Salamone
Home may be a man’s castle, but in Paul Salamone’s case, the entire fiefdom was allegedly fraudulent.
The Medford man is facing a Suffolk County, Long Island, jury this week after being accused of breaking into seven homes in various states of foreclosure and illegally renting some of them out in a scheme to capitalize on the failing local housing market. In his defense, his attorney points out that 28-year-old Salamone, who prosecutors say had renovated some of the vacant houses before he advertised them as for rent on Craigslist, truly believes what he was doing was right. Despite Salamone’s supposed good intentions, at least two families that rented from him were caught in the crossfire and evicted after the alleged scam began to unravel.
Accused felon Paul Salamone is charged with renting foreclosed homes he didn’t own.
“Confusion and misunderstanding, not guns or knives, were Mr. Salamone’s weapons,” said Marc Lindemann, the assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case, in his opening statements at Suffolk County court in Riverhead on June 22.
Salamone allegedly told realtors that they no longer had ownership of the houses and backed his argument with what Lindemann described as official-looking documents. But many of the houses were actually owned by Deutsche Bank, said Lindemann, a prosecutor with the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office’s Economic Crimes Bureau.
It took police several months to connect the dots. A grand jury had indicted Salamone on five counts of burglary, but two more counts were added when additional houses were discovered. He was also charged with grand larceny for the “rent” he received, and criminal possession of a forged instrument for filing more than a dozen fraudulent liens.
Salamone’s attorney, Eric Naiburg, admits that his client made a serious mistake, but insists he is not a crook.
“He had no right to be in these houses,” the Smithtown-based attorney said in his opening statement. “That is conceded. That he went into these houses with the intent to commit a crime, that is not conceded, not conceded at all.”
“If this was a scheme, it was dumb,” Naiburg said, adding that if Salamone was trying to scam people, as prosecutors allege, then “he is the worst scam artist this nation has ever seen.”
What do you think of the defense attorneys statement? Salamone rented the homes out that wasn’t his, but Salamone did not intend to commit a crime? Huh?
Two of the kidnapping suspects
So we have financial advisors who steal money in this country and wait for the wheels of justice to turn to punish them. But some senior citizens in Germany had what they thought was a better approach to punish and get their money back at the same time.
The good senior citizens ambushed James Amburn, 56 outside his home in Speyer, Western Germany, bound him with duct tape and bundled him into a car trunk.
Amburn was than driven 300 miles to the Bavarian lakeside home of one of the gang. As the financial advisor Amburn, who runs investment firm Digitalglobalnet, was taken to the cellar another couple, retired doctors, joined the kidnappers in the cellar where Mr. Amburn was chained and tortured for four days last week.
The reason for all of the anger from the good citizens was that the financial advisor has lost the equivalent of $3.3 million of their money. It seems that their money was supposed to have been invested in Florida real estate, which of course was lost completely.
Mr Amburn said: ‘I had known these people for 25 years. I had no reason to be afraid. But as I went into my home I was jumped from the rear and struck.
‘They bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. It took them quite a while because they ran out of breath. When they loaded me into the car I thought I was a dead man.
‘I was bleeding from my eyes, nose and my mouth. But the nightmare had only just started.’
During his confinement in an unheated cellar, Mr Amburn claims he was burned with cigarettes, beaten, had two of his ribs broken when he was hit with a chair leg and chained up ‘like an animal.’
He says he was fed only two bowls of watery soup during his four days in the dungeon.
He was rescued when he convinced his captors that he had money in a Switzerland bank that could be transferred to them if they allowed him to fax a note to the bank. They agreed to let him send the fax, but unknown to the seniors he scribbled a note at the bottom of the fax to call the police.
Shortly afterwards, the Swiss bank telephoned police in Germany and an armed team of special SEK commandos was scrambled and the house was stormed in the early hours of Saturday morning.
An ambulance with a doctor had to be called not only for Mr. Amburn, but also for the senior citizens because of their infirmities. How about that!
Chief public prosecutor Volker Ziegler said: ‘They were angry because they invested money in properties in Florida and he lost it all.
‘This was black money – they hadn’t declared it to the revenue authorities in Germany.’
Mr. Amburn is recovering from cigarette burns, broken ribs, threats of being killed by the Mafia. The seniors are facing 15 years in jail for kidnapping, torture and tax evasion.
Finally what do you think of this vigilantism? Do you condone their actions?
The pug and the peacock, is this a battle to a draw? You decide. Make a comment and let me know if you like this breed or have one.
Anyhow, Angel has no new dog listing this week. Lots of potential clients saying they’re going to send in pictures of their dogs with a little story, so hopefully they will do that soon.
So to fill in the rest of the week, we found one of her relatives starring in this video of the pug versus the peacock.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhVwhJmFmfQ
(If you can’t see this video, you need to download flash player to see it)
“The expression of the Pug belies its true sense of fun. Pugs are sociable dogs, and usually stubborn about certain things, but they are playful, charming, clever and are known to succeed in dog obedience skills.
Bred to adorn the laps of the Chinese sovereigns during the Shang dynasty (before 400 BC), in East China, they were known as “Lo-Chiang-Sze” or “Foo” (ceramic foos, transmogrified into dragon, with their bulging eyes are very Pug-like). The Pug’s popularity spread to Tibet, where they were mainly kept by monks, and then went onto Japan, and finally Europe.
This breed may also be referred to as a “Lion Dog” or “Foo (or Fu) Dog” due to its resemblance to Chinese guardian lions just like the Pekingese dog breed from China of similar origin and resemblance to Chinese guardian lions which are considered a guardian spirit.”
Thomas Hastert
It’s hard for me to imagine a man like Thomas Hastert a man who worked so hard to get ahead in this world becoming a felon. Hastert worked for the Nevada County Sheriff’s office, studied to become an attorney, then got his real estate broker’s license.
Once he got his broker’s license he proceed to engage in hard money lending in direct conflict with the law, making construction loans without fully funding them, a felony.
In addition, Hastert pleaded no contest to 62 counts of embezzlement, offering and selling unregistered and unqualified securities by false and incomplete communications. According to the Attorney General of California amounting to $20 million lost by his clients. That’s a lot of money to handle and lose. A standard fee for the mortgage broker Hastert is to charge is about 3 percent of the loan amount which means Hastert would have pocketed about $600,000.
Hastert’s attorneys and the California Deputy Attorney General Keith Lyon had reached a plea bargain that would have given Hastert five years in state prison. Normally that type of sentence means two and one-half years and he’s out of prison.
However, at the sentencing Judge Sean Dowling rejected the plea agreement and came back with his own sentencing of eight years and four months. Hastert’s attorney refused the new sentencing and demanded a jury trial.
I met Thomas Hastert some time ago, while he was an attorney. I did some investigations (as a civil engineer) for Hastert regarding building code violations for some of the real estate cases that he had. My impression of him at that time was that he was a nice person and I had no idea that he would resort to what he did. What does a person like that think? We have the Bernard Madoff, the Sir Walter Stanford’s who look you in the eye with a smile and steal your pocket book at the same time.
It seems that the California Department of Education has taken a leaf from Wall Street and AIG. Let’s keep the bad CEO’s which in this case are superintendents and their staff, layoff school teachers, and then cook the books on the rate of dropouts in the State’s high schools.
By using Wall Street techniques and new math, they claimed that the overall dropout rate for California dropped from 21.1 percent to 20.1 percent in 2008. But they noted only 68.3 percent graduated! The best guess is that the other 11 percent of students went into an equivalent of an offshore account where they were given a triple A rating.
Calling this unsecured account a derivative, they may somehow have become an asset instead of a liability.
It is my understanding that this account will be sold for additional funding for employing more staff for the management team and the administration.
In further accounting maneuvers, just a few months ago, they raised the high school dropout rate from 12 to 24 percent. Wall Street would indeed be proud of this administration.
By the way, according to the 2007-08 report from the National Education Association we spend more than $300,000 annually for each classroom of 25 students. My daughter is a school teacher and she has to buy paper and pencils for her students.
You know why? 75% of that money goes to salaries, benefits, administration and other overhead costs. That’s $9,000 per student or $225,000 per classroom per year for overhead. Now you know why they can’t provide pencils and paper.
Quoting the Visalia Times-Delta
““While enrollment has dropped by 70,000 in the last four years, the Department of Education (actually the districts themselves do the hiring) used its increasing funds to hire just 3,800 additional teachers while adding 15,600 more nonclassroom employees between 2004 and 2007. Our schools must have a reliable stream of funding, but it should be based on actual enrollment needs.”
Did you get that, they hired 76% more overhead then they did teachers. Yet, every time they cut the state budget for schools they lay off—teachers.
If you think this needs to be fixed, let your favorite politician know what’s going on.
