Re: Splurges

Love those pot fillers…and how about the built-in coffee machines?

Lee Cottrell Trenholm Rocks

With Dave Perry-Miller and Associates at Ebby Halliday…over from Allie Beth Allman with her son and biz partner, Trey Trenholm. (I fancy that name, Trey, or, as in my own precious son, Tres.) 

Green Prefab in Santa Monica

I meant to mention this very cool home we learned about last week in Santa Monica. The first Platinum LEED certified house in the U.S. They make it all sound so easy…

Ten Most Popular Splurges

According to the National Association of Realtors, among the ten most popular homeowner splurges are: wiring for Christmas lights, heated bathroom floors and pot filler faucets for the kitchen. Who knew?

Lost Desserts–Helen Corbitt’s Caramel Soufflé with Vanilla Custard Sauce

Rizzoli’s Lost Desserts doesn’t come out until November, but publicist Pam Sommers was nice enough to send us a recipe from Dallas’ Helen Corbitt, the famous chef at Neiman Marcus’ The Zodiac Room, and whom Stanley Marcus once touted as “the Balenciaga of food.” Hit the jump for the recipe. (more…)

Changes in the Fabric World

After a few years of relative stability in the showrooms–no lines moving around a lot, no big showrooms closing their doors–things are shifting around a bit. Zimmer-Rohde has purchased Travers and is moving to George Cameron Nash. Probably, as they are acquiring brands and starting to become another big fabric conglomerate, they don’t want to compete with the big, heavy Cowtan & Tout. Now, George has Zimmer, Culp has Cowtan, and ID Collection has Osborne & Little, including Designers Guild. Sort of like the mergers and acquisitions on Wall Street, but no one makes that much money. Maybe David Smith does.

Alessi Coming To Preston Royal

Totally forgot to tell you: Alessi is opening a store at Preston Royal.

Surface View Wall Murals

Whoa. I can’t get over this company. You select one of their murals, send them your specifications for a wall, then they send you the mural in strips like wallpaper, and bam! You’ve got yourself one heck of a show piece. They’ve got a ton of different options. Check it out here.

Southern Bulbs

I went down to Golden, Texas Friday night to meet with Chris Wiesinger of Southern Bulbs, and I cannot praise that guy enough. He and Dr. Bill Welch, professor of horticulture at Texas A&M, had just returned from a scout trip to Louisiana looking for Naked Ladies (the flower in the posted picture; apologies to the folks whose browsers led them here while searching for something else entirely).

I’m writing a story about Chris so you’ll learn more later but, quickly, Southern Bulbs is 26-year-old Chris’ baby. They specialize in rescuing heirloom, drought-hardy bulbs from the bulldozer at a construction site or from old farm houses and abandoned lots from all over Texas. The results are tough, rare flowers that bloom in the harshest Texas summer and show beautifully. Hit jump for a pic of Chris and his friends and little more info on good ol’ Golden, Texas.

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Affordable Art

Gorgeous new stuff from the very cool Aesthetic Apparatus, which created new art prints ($260) for Austin’s Decoder Ring Design Concern. But if you like what you see, better hurry–three of the five new prints are already sold out.

More Negative Financial News For The Home Mortgage Industry

With this filing from American Home Mortgage and more proof that little-or-no-down mortgages are a thing of the past…

Ebby Loves A Little Luxury

Just FYI, Ebby Halliday was represented at Real Estate Connect–sort of–with the launch of a new website called LuxuryProperty.com. This note came while I was at the conference:

“Candy, I believe LuxuryProperty.com is launching at the conference–be sure
to look for it. Ebby, Ellen Terry and Dave Perry-Miller inventory will be included!”

About That Condo Market: Why We Love Latin America

Back (kicking and screaming) from San Francisco. Had a great chat Thursday with Richard Swerdlow and Adam Kujacznski of Condo.com.

If you own any condos, particularly investment condos, you may want to stop reading now and go get a drink (make it a double). The flipping game is over, says Swerdlow, CEO of Condo.com. There will be an enormous slowdown in the condo market because the investor mentality has gone away. (Look what happened Friday– meltdown.) Lenders are now requiring a larger deposit and qualifying buyers after the re-set–that is, qualifying folks at the higher rates they will have to pay down the road. (It was the low low interest rates, easy credit and low deposit requirements that created some of this mess–people holding contracts and never intending to move into condos.) However, Swerdlow says that game is over. His site is the world’s largest marketplace for condos with more than 400,000 listings. “We saw a global marketplace for condos–we connect buyers and sellers,” he says. Condos are the only real estate asset that are global, he says, and folks buy and sell condos sight unseen based on square footage; Realtors use them as well to list. Condo.com just merged with Terra Networks, the largest U.S. Hispanic portal and web access provider in Spain and Latin America, to launch a bilingual online condo marketplace. Oh, and P.S.: The Texas condo market is doing pretty darn well compared with other parts of the country thanks in large part to an influx of buyers from Latin America. Bravo.