Seriously…and it would actually be super-sweet. “Waller Creek Whitewater Trail” a local group that’s put together the proposition, says that it’s actually perfect.  In order to get ~1 million s.f. of downtown real estate out of the floodplain, the city has approved a $125m tunnel that’s going to be used to divert water underneath the creek when it storms. This same tunnel can be used to pipe water up the creek from Town Lake (I refuse to call it Ladybird Lake) whenever it’s NOT storming. By doing this, we can have controlled rapids in the middle of downtown Austin 365 days out of the year.

Let me say…I think this would be a first for any major city’s downtown.

I’ve been working on closing a Four Season’s condo w/ one of their on-sites, Ian Stonington.  The transaction has been a bit difficult, but I think we’ll get it to the finish line.  Regardless, Ian let me know a few days ago that they’ve hit their mark to break ground & should do so within a couple of months.

The project is going to be fantastic.  It’s priced from the $400’s to $3m+, and is typically ~$600/s.f.  The HOA will be roughly $.65/s.f. and will include quite a bit.  They are constructing a tunnel from the Four Season’s hotel to the condo’s and every service offered to the Four Season’s guests will be available to the Four Season’s residents.

In an effort to best use this blog to reinforce my real estate brand, I’ve started a second, off-site blog that I’ve titled “Bramblog” check it out at its name dotcom. I will not link to this blog for SEO reasons.

Regardless, this blog will be refocused 100% to Austin real estate & national events that affect Austin real estate. All other subjects - SEO, SEM, side projects, etc… will go on Bramblog.

I haven’t written about much on that blog yet, but it will be updated frequently, and it be do-follow so you’ll get your link love.

Pop the champagne!  We sold our first bottle of lotion today!

I haven’t blogged about this yet, but it’s been in the works for a couple of months. We’re finally launching (as in, it’s live) so I thought that I should introduce it. First, let me state one important fact:

I am still 100% focused on real estate - this is what I specialize in, and this is what I love (not to mention, it’s what I’m good at.)

With that said…I’ve partnered with two good friends from college to launch TanTans.com, an “ultra-premium provider of tanning products at discount prices.” Basically, it breaks down like this: One of my good friends is a phenomenal graphic/web designer, another owns a kickass tanning salon, & I’m OK at web marketing. So…we decided to join forces.

We’ve been working on it for about 2 months & we’re already ranking 10-11 for “tanning lotion,” among other terms, and we have ~30 uniques/day. I’m very interested to see where this goes. It will definitely be a learning experience, but if we’re able to make it mildly (or wildly) successful, it will make for a fantastic template for future projects.

Let me know what you think of TanTans!!!

Let me preface this by saying that we (Austin) are in one of the best real estate markets in the United States. People are still buying & homes are still selling - but DOM (days on market) is a little longer. The only market to remain relatively untouched by the mortgage fallout is the super-high end market ($3m+). Unfortunately, that’s not my market (at least not this year.) With that said - we have been affected. The mortgage fallout seemed to coincide w/ the seasonal slow-down this year, so it just seems like it’s a much slower holiday season.

I’ve said all along that we should see some relief by around February/March…it won’t get back to the crazy days of “anyone can buy a house,” but the pendulum will start swinging back in the right direction.

So…the point of this blog…I received a forwarded email from an LO that was extremely encouraging. A representative from her bank met w/ the director of FHA, who was extremely optimistic about raising the cap of FHA loans to $417k by the end of December.

This is huge. There are many people who are completely unqualifiable (even in sub-prime) or who are sub-prime (and would receive a hideous rate) who can qualify for FHA. The only hitch is that they just removed DPA’s, but we can still get an FHA in with 2.25% down, and no closing costs. Let me say this: If you can’t come up w/ 2.25% then you have no business buying a $400k home!!!

Let’s just say that I will definitely begin actively marketing FHA loans as soon as the cap is listed (and I’ll go ahead and start preparing now!)

Construction has begun on the 850k s.f. mixed use Block 21 in downtown Austin. And yes, kids, that does include The W Hotel (of Cash McMogulson fame…no medium sized deals) The W will be pretty incredible, and will more than likely attract some super-trendy people from all over Austin. (I’ll be conspicuously absent - opting instead to spend my free time drinking beer/wakeboarding.)

But seriously, The W is going to be sweet, and definitely helps cement Austin’s status as an up/coming major metropolitan area. And while I probably won’t spend much time there (if any) I can definitely appreciate what it is, and what it means for downtown Austin.

The floors are coming in & the spiral staircase is here! The upstairs master bathroom turned out really awesome - the tile is really light in color & looks very clean/sharp. We did 45 degree angled tile on the floors & then brick pattern on the walls & shower - very nice contrast. Here are pics:

Master Bathroom & My Puppy-Mama

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So we’re back rolling!  It seemed like not a lot has happened over the last week, but it has - the texture is all in, and it looks really solid.  They started laying tile in the kitchen & 1/2 bath yesterday.  They’re putting tile in the other 2 bathrooms today.  The cabinetry should be in w/in a week…we’re basically at finish-out, which is the fun part.  Here are a couple pics of the tile…

Both of the kitchen tile…

Half Bath tile…

I haven’t blogged about my tanning lotion project yet, but I will in the very near future. I’m teaming up w/ 2 of my good friends from college to pull it off - and it’s going to be killer.

I’ll get into the details later, but I wanted to write about how easy it is to put together a super custom myspace profile. I searched around for less than five minutes & found this great squidoo lense on how to put together custom Myspace designs. It’s ridiculously easy…I don’t have it 100% down yet, but I was able to put this design together for my tanning project. Let me know what you think!

More on this later…