Among an impressive lineup of speakers at the annual Mortgage Bankers Association convention in October: Bono, the front man for U2. Yes, he’s taken on many a cause in recent years, including AIDS and poverty in Africa. I knew he occasionally stopped at the White House and scored a Time cover with Bill and Melinda Gates a couple years ago, but I had no idea he was on the biz convention lecture circuit.

So you might consider signing up soon if you want to get that “Boy” LP autographed. (Start saving now. Early registration is $935 for members and $1,975 for nonmembers, with some sessions costing extra.) Also scheduled to speak at the convention: historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Companies, George Foreman and comedian Martin Short.

Earlier this month the Northwest Multiple Listing Service added a new option for showcasing properties for sale – boxes that highlight eco-friendly aspects of a home.

An update released this morning shows more than 100 homes are being marketed as Built Green or having Energy Star features.

The more info about a house for sale, the better, it seems. But I wonder how important being green is to buyers and agents. Just a nice extra? Or will it make or break a sale for some? Any thoughts?

Leaking windows, blurry sinks, cluttered counters.

All this and more could be yours, according to the bad photos at two Web sites I ran across featuring daily updates on the worst of the MLS photos.

Some could be worse, but particularly at a time when everyone’s looking for an edge the ick factor of some are pretty amazing. Envision rooms so dark you can’t make them out or a room shot so close up you can’t even tell what room it might be. Or matching antlered prizes hung on either side of a door. (Some of the comments by the site hosts are fun too. On a black-and-white photo of an empty room with big curtains and lit chandeliers: “What’s back there? Zombie bodies?”)

Or just go here and here and look for yourself.

Nationally, inventory is up and median sales prices are down, according to the National Association of Realtors’ latest report.

Here’s an excerpt from the organization’s release:

Lawrence Yun, NAR senior economist, said the market softness is understandable.

“I think psychological factors are currently the biggest drag on the housing market, in addition to a disruption from tighter credit for subprime borrowers,” he said. “Household formation has slowed dramatically since late 2006, implying that many people are doubling-up – they’re adding roommates or moving in with parents.

“The market is underperforming when you consider positive fundamentals such as the strength in job creation, economic growth, favorable mortgage interest rates and flat home prices. It appears some buyers are simply waiting for more signs of stability before they get serious about getting into the market.”

Nationally, the median existing-home price for all housing types was $223,700 in May, which is 2.1 percent below the same month a year ago, according to the group. At the same time, inventory was up, with an 8.9 month supply.

You can take a look at the full release here.

A Washington Post columnist recently highlighted a Federal Trade Commission study that showed most mortgage customers didn’t know the upfront charges on their loans, the penalties for early pay off or the difference between the stated interest rate and the annual percentage rate, or APR.

Such ignorance, columnist Kenneth R. Harney said, has something to do with today’s increase in foreclosures:

With mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures soaring, federal researchers have identified a key contributing factor: Many borrowers simply do not understand their mortgages -- especially subprime loans that come with complex features and costly penalties.

As a result, too many people are ill-prepared to handle jolting payment hikes and rate-reset deadlines.

Check out Harney’s full column here.

This from a blog post at CNBC:

Chad Dreier, chairman and CEO for builder Ryland Group Inc., said at a J.P. Morgan conference last week, "We do think if you're dumb enough to buy a home builder (share), you ought to buy us," Diana Olick reported.

OK, maybe not fun. But funny. Yes?

Olick does a lot of reporting on builders at her Realty Check blog. You can catch her whole post on the conference, which she says included some refreshing straight shooting from Ara Hovnanian, the CEO of K Hovnanian Homes. The company doesn't build in Washington but does have projects in 19 other states.

You can find Olick's full blog here.

Another home tour focused on affordable options is coming to the South Sound this weekend, featuring houses and condos in Puyallup, Lake Tapps, Tacoma and elsewhere.

Of the homes I checked out, some of the prices were on the lower side of what’s out there: condos in Puyallup for $199,950, a Federal Way town home for $202,000 and a Fife rambler for $85,900.

The tour takes place noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and for those new to home buying, there's an orientation at 12:30 and 3 on both days at the Portland Avenue Community Center in Tacoma at 3513 Portland Ave.

To find out more about the homes on the tour, go here.

If you had your hopes set on the largest and priciest of the 153 condos planned for the first phase of Point Ruston, you’ll have to settle for the second biggest.

Developer Mike Cohen stopped by the TNT today to chat about the project, which he hopes to begin building in September, and said the two largest units – 3,100 square feet and selling for more than $2 million each – are reserved. Cohen said he hasn’t officially started taking reservations but the unnamed buyers sought him out. (Permits haven't even been issued yet for the project.) They purchased options for an amount Cohen declined to disclose. (This project, you’ll remember, is the one planned on prime waterfront land that also happens to be the old Asarco site.)

As part of Point Ruston, Cohen also plans a hotel (negotiations, Cohen said, are under way with a regional chain), a 500-slip marina, offices, stores, restaurants, town homes, apartments, parks and a walkway along the shore open to the public.

A Kansas City mortgage company settled a federal class action lawsuit for $5.1 million today that claimed more than 1,600 Washington homeowners were taken advantage of.

The plaintiffs included at least 200 from the South Sound that attorney Ari Brown said paid higher interest rates, because NovaStar Mortgage passed on extra, undisclosed commission to their loan brokers.

NovaStar issues a press release that said the settlement “does not admit or concede there was any merit to the plaintiffs’ case.”

Tacoma homeowner Larry Brown, 57, said he ended up paying $100 extra monthly on his NovaStar mortgage, because he was sold a more costly loan than he wanted.

“It wasn’t really about the money. I’m only getting $1,800,” Brown said today after the settlement was announced. “We just need to stop that kind of practice.”

Just to show that no one knows what will happen with the housing market, or anything really, here are two items I spotted today on Bloomberg:

Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, the leader of the world’s second-biggest bank by market value, says U.S. growth is about to accelerate because the worst housing slump since 1991 is coming to an end. “You’ll see the economy begin to pick up in the third and fourth quarters” and the slowdown in home sales is “just about to be over,” Lewis said in an interview yesterday in New York.

And then this, from a different story:

The worst is yet to come for the U.S. housing market. The jump in 30-year mortgage rates by more than a half a percentage point to 6.74 percent in the past five weeks is putting a crimp on borrowers with the best credit just as a crackdown in subprime lending standards limits the pool of qualified buyers.

The national median home price is poised for its first annual decline since the Great Depression, and the supply of unsold homes is at a record 4.2 million, the National Association of Realtors reported. “It’s a blood bath,” said Mark Kiesel, executive vice president of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., the manager of $668 billion in bond funds. “We’re talking about a two- to three-year downturn that will take a whole host of characters with it, from job creation to consumer confidence. Eventually it will
take the stock market and corporate profit.”

Numbers issued today give a bleak outlook for the home construction industry. Here’s a look at MSNBC’s take:

As the housing market remains weak in many parts of the country, home builders are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel. The latest statistics on housing starts gave them only the faintest glimmer of hope. While there are some pockets of strength, it’s too soon to know when the industry will hit bottom, homebuilders and economists say.

Amid sluggish sales and rising problems with mortgage defaults, construction of new homes and apartments fell 2.1 percent in May, the worst performance since a nearly 14 percent plunge in January according to the latest data from the Commerce Department. Though the numbers included a slight up tick in building permits, the huge overhang of unsold properties continues to create a strong headwind for builders of new homes.

Go here for the full story.

In local measures, May’s unemployment figures for the state showed an increase for the month and year in construction jobs. However, a state economic forecast released last week says that growth in the construction of commercial buildings will offset weakness in residential.

Pierce County property assessments are to be mailed Friday and some of the value changes mirror home sale trends. County reporter David Wickert and I met with Assessor Ken Madsen and his staff this afternoon and talked about how they generate the values and why some cities are beating others.

Countywide assessments for all residential properties are up 9.8 percent this year. The median home sale price for 2006 was up 12.7 percent, excluding condos, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. (Beware, though, that assessments tend to trail current MLS-related stats because the numbers used in 2007 are gathered in 2006. Also, county numbers take into account nearly all residential properties, including vacant land. The MLS deals with home sales.)

A few of the cities topping the average assessment increase: Fife, one of the few cities where sales activity continues to beat last year’s, and Eatonville, in one of the MLS areas that was among last month’s biggest price-appreciation winners -- 24 percent to $279,000.

Look for more in-depth analysis on more than two dozen cities in this Sunday’s News Tribune.

After writing about lawyers getting rated at a new Seattle-based Web site, I found Homethinking – a site that lets you give one to five stars to your real estate agent. (You can, of course, also shop for a house.)

Stars are given in numerous categories, including neighborhood knowledge, understanding of a property’s weaknesses and ability to answer a seller’s questions. And you can add your verbatim opinion, such as this one for a one-star agent in Franklin, Mass.: “Said negative things about other agents. His Bad!!”

One immediate concern: You can post anonymously, which seems unfair when it comes to slamming anyone, particularly someone trying to run a business.

What do you think? I couldn’t find any Tacoma agents rated, so you could be the first …

Not so long ago I lived in a place far south of here, where there were many more homes and many more people. But the Riverside-San Bernardino area, like Pierce County, had become an affordable alternative even as median home prices wildly appreciated. People sold their homes in Orange and Los Angeles counties and brought their newfound cash east, buying big suburban spreads with pools and room for their RVs.

While the inventory levels are starting to feel a little painful in Pierce County, check out what it looks like in the Riverside-San Bernardino area: 50,527 condos and homes for sale, according to Housing Tracker. Pierce County, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service? 8,039. Yes, it’s Southern California and the area is bigger than many states, but Riverside-San Bernardino is a bedroom community widely pitched as THE place to buy, to settle, to live a life you can afford.

Just thought I’d share a little perspective from somewhere else very different yet kind of the same.

Foreclosures are up in Washington state but not like they are around the rest of the country, according to figures released Tuesday by real estate research company RealtyTrac.

Foreclosures in May, compared to May 2006, were up 40.6 percent in Washington. That’s compared to an 89.9 percent increase nationwide.

Where are folks the worst off? Nevada, where foreclosures jumped 374.6 percent year over year.

Among the better reasons for embarking on a condo project: Because you want to live there.

Construction has started on developer Bruce Steel’s Stadium 302, a five-unit building in Tacoma’s Stadium district he promises will be ultra-luxury – Italian cabinetry, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, big views, in-condo elevator entry, walnut flooring. Prices are expected to range from $1.2 million to more than $2 million.

“These are truly like no other condos you have seen or will see in Tacoma,” he said.

Why so fancy?

“I think there’s a market for that and, besides, I want to live in one,” he said. He also said he's unconcerned about competing with other high-end condos.

Steel is CEO of Norpoint Communities, which builds and operates retirement communities. He also built The Lobster Shop on Tacoma’s waterfront and some condos in Old Town.

He plans to wrap up work on Stadium 302 in June 2008.

More than 900 condominiums were listed for sale in Pierce County in May, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

That's a 129 percent increase in local listings over May 2006. And there was a considerable leap in for-sale inventory since the month before – 127 more condos listed in May than April.

On an up note -- prices continued to appreciate, a 7.35 percent increase to $226,490.

So where are all those for-sale condos? Here are where some of the units are located with the year-over-year percentage increases.

• Puyallup: 186 (+304%)
• Central Tacoma: 165 (+87.5%)
• Lakewood: 87 (+149%)
• North Tacoma: 143 (+62.5%)
• Gig Harbor area: 58 (+152%)

Here’s how Pierce County stacked up against its neighbors on key housing stats for May, according to what was released Wednesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. (Percentage changes are year-over-year comparisons.)

Median home price
Pierce: $281,000 (+6.9%)
King: $411,868 (+7%)
Kitsap: $307,000 (+11.6%)
Thurston: $265,475 (+6.2%)
Snohomish: $353,779 (+9.2%)

Closed sales
Pierce: 1,311 (-15.7%)
King: 3,514 (+2.1%)
Kitsap: 336 (-12.3%)
Thurston: 438 (-5.8%)
Snohomish: 1,378 (-13.2%)

Pending sales
Pierce: 1,436 (-21%)
King: 3,966 (-7.5%)
Kitsap: 400 (-15.4%)
Thurston: 501 (-13%)
Snohomish: 1,509 (-17.6%)

Number of listings
Pierce: 8,039 (+56.9%)
King: 11,204 (+52.5%)
Kitsap: 2,488 (+41.5%)
Thurston: 2,266 (+41.6%)
Snohomish: 5,753 (+59.5%)

Here's a sneak peak at tomorrow's monthly MLS story:

Rising prices and sinking sales made for a mixed housing market in Pierce County last month as several thousand homes vied for buyers attention.

The median home price increased, compared to the same month a year ago, by a respectable 6.9 percent to $281,000, according to figures released Wednesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Pending sales, however, declined 21 percent – the largest year-over-year drop so far in 2007 and the biggest in the Puget Sound.

At the same time, Pierce County’s number of listings skyrocketed – up 57 percent to 8,039 over the previous May.

Gail Jensen, a Crescent Realty agent in Spanaway who works primarily with sellers, said she’s counseling them to price smart.

“I haven’t seen a stagnant market like this in 18 years,” Jensen said.

And a bonus stat from Dick Beeson, a Multiple Listing Service director and Windermere broker:

The supply of homes countywide remains at six months – any more and the market would be considered one that favors buyers. North Tacoma sits at the better end of that measure, with about 4.5 months of supply, while Gig Harbor has entered buyer’s market territory with a supply of homes that would take eight months to sell, Beeson said.

Look for more details in tomorrow's News Tribune. Plus, I'll post additional stats, including from around the Puget Sound, and local condo numbers at Open House.

If you’re a household in Pierce County and you earn the median income, you make $49,584, according to a 2005 survey by the U.S. Census. Which doesn’t buy you a lot of house – maybe around $170,000, assuming a 5 percent down payment.

So where to find such a home? I’ve located a few that will be featured in a Sunday story that continues a series I’m doing on first-time home buyers. But what about you? Did you find the right house at the right very low price? How'd you do it? What Pierce County areas would you recommend to first timers on a tight budget?

When you hear the term “executive-style home,” do you know what it means? Other than, “not the house I live in”?

What does buying an executive-style house or being located in an executive neighborhood actually get you? Are there certain luxuries automatically attached to such houses? Do those who shop for executive homes have expectations dashed or exceeded based on assumptions made from such a vague term?

Whatever you think executive housing might look like, you can apparently find it these days throughout the South Sound – an MLS search I ran came up with “executive” homes in Gig Harbor, Tacoma, Lakewood, Eatonville, Lake Tapps and Fox Island. Many wanted more than $1 million.

Here’s a sampling of their listed amenities:
• No bank waterfront, circular drive, 26-foot-ceiling entry, “your own turret.”
• Slab granite counters, Viking kitchen appliances, Kohler plumbing fixtures, security system.
• A 110-mile view up Colvos Passage, indoor pool, 1,200 bottle wine cellar, steam shower.
• Wet bar, 300-gallon tropical saltwater aquarium, imported tile throughout, heated floors.
• Manicured grounds, four-car garage, iron hand rails, executive office on upper floor.
• Formal dining with butler’s pantry, knotty alder cabinets, three fireplaces, fenced dog run.

Happy executive hunting.

Remember Casey Serin? He’s the 24-year-old from Sacramento who ran a popular blog called iamfacingforeclosure.com. He laid it all out there: The properties he’d bought with no money of his own, his lack of ability to flip them, creditors hunting him down and how his string of self-inflicted financial troubles were hurting his young marriage.

Serin pulled in thousands of posts, many not too keen on his brand of money making. And even some donations to help pay the bills.

But Serin posted a brief note today saying he's done:

IamFacingForeclosure.com is over. It will never return.

Advertisers: Feel free to cancel your PayPal subscription. I will be issuing pro-rated refunds this week.

Everybody: I'm very sorry to end like this. I wish I could say more, but it all came down to choosing between my wife and this blog. As much as I hated and resented having to make this choice, I believe I made the right one.

Thanks: to all the supporterz, haterz and everyone who wrote about me. You guys made the last 9 crazy months of blogging possible.