Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson is taking a swing at selling his Las Vegas home. The Mediterranean-style villa located on the city’s southern edge is on the market for $499,000.
Jackson, known as “Mr. October” for his clutch performance in the postseason, is hoping for a home run with the fairly modest home.
The home, which last changed hands in 2002 for $470,000, appears to have been available as a rental for the past five years.
Built in 2002, the two-bedroom, 2.5-bath abode is located in the guard-gated Southern Highlands Estates Golf Course community. Set on a quiet cul-de-sac, the home features a private courtyard entry with a stone fireplace.
Inside, there’s an open dining and living space and the great room boasts a fireplace and wet bar. The kitchen, which opens out to the patio, includes granite counters and custom cabinetry.
Reggie Jackson’s Las Vegas home
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Dining and living space
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Kitchen
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Master suite with outdoor access
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Courtyard with stone fireplace
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Grassy lawn
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The spacious master suite includes two large closets and yard access. Out back you’ll find a guest casita with a full bath, a covered patio, and lush landscaping.
In the past, the 73-year-old has had some bad luck with his real estate. He lost many of his belongings, including baseball memorabilia, when his home went up in flames during the massive Oakland Hills fire in 1991, then the most destructive California wildfire in history.
That disaster came after one of the warehouses he owned caught fire in 1988, ruining a $3.2 million car collection, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
The slugger—who had his own namesake candy bar at the height of his career—has also maintained homes in Newport Beach and Carmel.
Jackson began his MLB career in 1967 and starred for 21 seasons with the Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, California Angels, and New York Yankees. He’s a 14-time All-Star, five-time World Series winner, and two-time MVP. His 563 career home runs rank him 14th all-time in major league history.
Retired MLB pitcher Mark Mulder has decided to sell his family’s custom home in Scottsdale, AZ. He’s listed the impressive property for $2.2 million.
Mulder bought the home for $2,025,000 in 2003, while he was starring for the Oakland Athletics. (The A’s spring training home is in the Phoenix area.)
After holding on to the Scottsdale home for over a decade, he’s now ready to part with it. In 2015, he listed a different Arizona home, a couple of hours north in Flagstaff, for $1,435,000. Located on a golf course, that home wound up selling in April 2016 for $1,375,000.
The home he’s selling now sits on over an acre in the upscale North Scottsdale area. The 6,100 square feet include five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. Open, airy, and designed for entertaining, the property resembles a resort rather than a private residence.
There are oversize rooms with custom touches like built-ins and fireplaces. The grounds include a large pool, spa, kitchen, basketball court, and putting green.
There’s little doubt Mulder and his wife, Lindsey, and their three kids have had a lot of fun times in this house.
Exterior
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Kitchen
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Dining room
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Family room
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Master suite
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Master bathroom
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Outdoor living space
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Pool
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Basketball court
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Putting green
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The putting green isn’t just for show. Since his retirement from baseball in 2010, Mulder has emerged as a premier golfer on the celebrity circuit, winning titles across the country.
The former ace pitcher qualified for the Safeway Open PGA Tour event in Napa, CA, in October, adding to a mounting list of his golf accolades and accomplishments.
Mulder won the 2019 Showcase Celebrity Golf Tournament in Coeur d’Alene, ID, where his wife graduated from Gonzaga Prep. He had a lot of positive things to say about the place.
“I love it. I love the atmosphere, the lake is amazing, exactly what my wife said it was,” Mulder told the Spokesman-Review about the area during the tournament.
But for now Mulder’s Twitter profile has his home listed in Arizona, meaning he must be trading out this home for another in the state. And now, someone new has the chance to purchase the sporty spot in Scottsdale owned by a world-class pitcher—and golfer.
WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the third time this year and began to downplay expectations of further cuts for now.
The policy statement released Wednesday signaled a potentially higher bar for rate reductions after the latest move, which will drop the target for the federal-funds rate to a range between 1.5% and 1.75%.
Officials removed language used in June, July and September in which the rate-setting committee said it would “act as appropriate” to sustain the economic expansion. They replaced that phrase with a milder alternative. “The committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook as it assesses the appropriate path” of its target rate, the statement said.
Eight of 10 officials voted to lower the Fed’s benchmark rate, charged on overnight loans between banks, by a quarter percentage point. Two Fed officials disapproved of the action, preferring to hold rates steady.
Fed officials have now cut their benchmark three times since July to cushion the economy against a slowdown in business investment amplified by the U.S.-China trade conflict. The Fed raised rates four times last year.
Wednesday’s policy statement made almost no other changes. It noted that household spending had been rising at a strong pace while business investment and exports remained weak. The Commerce Department reported economic output during the third quarter rose at 1.9% annual rate, little changed from a 2% growth rate in the second quarter.
Fed officials didn’t release new projections after Wednesday’s meeting. After cutting rates in September, seven of 17 officials had penciled in one more rate cut this year. The other 10 didn’t forecast any cuts, with five of those signaling they believed last month’s reduction was a mistake.
In the weeks leading up to the meeting, Fed officials were less vocal about their policy plans than they had been in the run-up to two earlier rate cuts.
Weak business survey data in early October led markets to predict the Fed would cut rates, and those expectations hardened after Fed officials didn’t publicly counter them.
Fed officials don’t like to act just because markets expect it. But with investors assigning a greater than 90% probability to a rate cut in futures markets over the past week, failing to deliver could have led to a stock selloff and higher borrowing costs that potentially undercut the benefit of the Fed’s recent cuts.
The bigger questions heading into this week’s two-day meeting were whether and how Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues would signal any potential timeout to the central bank’s cuts.
Officials have compared their moves to an insurance policy designed to offset the risk that the U.S.-China trade war and a broader global slowdown leads to a sharp downturn-as opposed to a more aggressive rate-cut campaign due to signs of imminent recession.
The tweaks to Wednesday’s statement illustrate how the central bank is much closer to the line between the mini-easing cycle officials outlined in July and a full-blown rate-cut sequence.
Mr. Powell said last month the uncertain economic outlook made it hard to predict how long rate cuts might last.
“I’d love to articulate a simple, straightforward” rule for suspending rate cuts, he said. “There will come a time, I suspect, when we think we’ve done enough, but there may also come a time when the economy worsens, and we would then have to cut more aggressively.”
Faced with rising risks to growth as the trade war escalated through the summer, Mr. Powell indicated the Fed’s bias was to cut rates if readings on economic activity didn’t improve. But in the last few weeks, officials began laying the groundwork for a subtle but important shift in which they might cut rates instead if those readings worsened.
Officials have highlighted episodes in 1995-96 and 1998 when the Fed cut interest rates three times, avoiding both recession and a full-blown round of rate reductions. “That’s the spirit in which we’re doing this,” Mr. Powell said earlier this month.
Officials have cited three reasons—weakening global growth, rising trade-policy uncertainty and muted inflation—for cutting rates this year. The U.S.-China trade conflict worsened immediately after the Fed made its initial rate cut in July, but the Trump administration earlier this month took steps to put trade talks back on track. Meantime, the global industrial downturn has shown few signs of bottoming out.
U.S. economic data paint a mixed picture. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that business spending contracted for the second straight quarter, offset by healthy consumer spending and modest improvement in the rate-sensitive housing sector.
Hiring has slowed this year, but to levels that have been strong enough to hold down unemployment. The private sector added an average 119,000 jobs per month during the third quarter, down from 165,000 in the first quarter. The unemployment rate stood at 3.5% in September, a half-century low.
Fed officials will see two more employment reports before their final scheduled meeting of the year on Dec. 10-11, including data set for release Friday from the Labor Department on October’s hiring picture.
Inflation pressures, meanwhile, remain restrained. They have run below the central bank’s 2% target this year, and measures of consumer and businesses’ expectations of future inflation have edged lower in recent months. Fed officials pay close attention to inflation expectations because they can be self-fulfilling. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, prices were up 1.8% from a year earlier in August, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge.
Stocks have rallied in recent weeks on optimism over a potential “phase one” agreement between Washington and Beijing to diffuse trade tensions.
Another positive development for the Fed is that market-determined interest rates, which tumbled in July and August, have firmed up in recent weeks. As a result, long-term interest rates have risen back above short-term interest rates, ending a monthslong inversion of the yield curve, which has often preceded recession by one or two years.
Former first lady Michelle Obama believes that the “white flight” she experienced growing up on Chicago’s South Side is continuing to destroy neighborhoods today.
Speaking at the annual Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago on Tuesday, she recalled how white families abandoned her once-diverse, middle-class Chicago community and others like it as more black families came into the neighborhood. And she warned that it’s still happening today as immigrants move into communities, spurring some white residents to pack up and leave.
“There were no gang fights, there were no territorial battles. Yet one by one, they packed their bags and they ran from us,” she said at the event. “And they left communities in shambles.”
White flight often results in lower property values, more vacant homes, and the general decline of the neighborhood. Yet the communities that experience it typically start out as middle-class, according to an academic article published last year in the journal Social Science Research.
“Whites are willing to tolerate a certain level of diversity, but once it crosses a threshold, white flight becomes likelier to occur,” said Samuel Kye, who carried out the study, in a statement accompanying his article. Kye is an Indiana University Bloomington sociology doctoral candidate. “Once the nonwhite groups become 20% to 25% of the population, that’s when it flips.”
That was what Obama experienced growing up on Chicago’s South Side. The city is the fourth most segregated metropolitan area in the nation, according to a recent report from 24/7 Wall St.
“You were running from us and you’re still running, because we’re no different than the immigrant families that are moving in … the families that are coming from other places to try to do better,” Obama said. Her brother, Craig Robinson, an executive with the New York Knicks, was also in attendance.
But statistics show that having immigrants move into a community decreases crime rather than boosting it. With every 1% increase in the foreign-born population, there were 4.9 fewer crimes per 100,000 people, according to a 2016 Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice study.
However, a 1% increase in immigrants in a community is met by a 1% rise in rental prices, according to a 2006 Journal of Urban Economics paper. On the other hand, home prices tend to rise faster in areas with low numbers of immigrants—presumably because some people are willing to pay more to live in a neighborhood with fewer foreigners.
“We were doing everything we were supposed to do—and better,” Obama said. “But when we moved in, white families moved out.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may stop offering certain mortgages as they prepare to privatize, but borrowers won’t be left behind, the companies’ chief regulator said Monday.
When the Trump administration released its plans for housing finance reform in September, one key element was to identify overlaps between the loan products offered by Fannie and Freddie and those insured by the Federal Housing Administration.
‘Fannie and Freddie must not repeat the mistakes of the crisis by stretching to serve borrowers who are better served by FHA.’
The Federal Housing Finance Agency put that recommendation into action Monday when it released its new strategic plan and “scorecard” for Fannie and Freddie. Through the scorecard, the FHFA outlined the priorities for Fannie and Freddie for the next year. For the first time, the agency is requiring the two enterprises to come up with plans for how they will exit conservatorship.
In 2020, the FHFA will require Fannie and Freddie to assist regulators in determining what overlaps exist between the two enterprises and the FHA.
“Thoughtfully addressing these overlaps makes sense for both the Enterprises and FHA because they were created to perform different roles in our housing finance system,” FHFA Director Mark Calabria said. “In order to prepare to responsibly exit conservatorship, Fannie and Freddie must not repeat the mistakes of the crisis by stretching to serve borrowers who are better served by FHA.”
But Calabria argued that having Fannie and Freddie move away from this market wouldn’t result in prospective borrowers having fewer options for home financing. “The intention is that there are no gaps,” he told reporters during a separate briefing. “The intention is to take a holistic view point, rather than have an approach where Fannie, Freddie and FHA are all fighting for market share.”
Historically, Fannie and Freddie have competed for market share with the FHA, and in recent years the two enterprises have offered more mortgages with low down payments and to borrowers with high debt-to-income ratios, similar to the types of loans the FHA was designed to offer to lower- and moderate-income Americans.
Those loans are riskier for lenders however, because the borrower has less equity in the property and more debt to grapple with, which can cause problems in an economic downturn.
The dollar amount in loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee is roughly 500 times larger than the amount they have in capital reserves.
Fannie and Freddie tend to serve borrowers with better credit scores, even when offering products similar to the FHA’s. That’s left the FHA, which is fully taxpayer-backed, with a riskier pool of loans.
“That decreases the credit quality of FHA and forces FHA in the long run to raise premiums,” Calabria said. “If you do that long enough, you don’t have anybody left except the worst credit risks.”
Separately, Calabria once again raised the alarm regarding the risk that Fannie and Freddie could fail again. Currently, the dollar amount in loans that the two enterprises own or guarantee is roughly 500 times larger than the amount they have in capital reserves.
As a result, timing is posing the greatest challenge to the FHFA’s efforts to get Fannie and Freddie out of conservatorship, Calabria said. If either of the housing or equity markets softens in the near future, that would make it much harder for Fannie and Freddie to raise capital.
“We’re not forecasting a downturn, but if we do have a downturn in the next couple years, they will fail,” Calabria said. “They will become insolvent, and they will run out of capital.”
The founder of GoPro, Nick Woodman, is having a go at selling his home in Woodside, CA. The farmhouse-style estate with resortlike amenities is available for $20 million.
Woodman purchased the property for $12.5 million in 2011, and is seeking a decent return on his investment.
It’s possible he could get it. The upscale Silicon Valley enclave is known as one of the wealthiest communities in the country, and this estate is only the fourth most expensive listing for sale in the tony town.
With Woodside’s median list price of $1.8 million, homes in this desirable and pricey locale spend an average of just 47 days on the market before being snapped up, according to realtor.com® data.
Woodman’s spacious spread was built in 2003 and features five bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, and 8,165 square feet. It is set on almost 3 acres, and the grounds include a detached gym and guesthouse, a pool, gardens, and lawns.
Nick Woodman’s Woodside home
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Living room with vaulted ceilings
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Dining room
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Kitchen with island and access outside
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Screened porch
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Master suite
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Inside, the contemporary structure is light and airy, with vaulted ceilings and access to the patio outside. The public rooms include a living room, dining room, and kitchen, with a large center island, plus built-in seating. Adjoining the kitchen is a screened-in dining area that flows out to the patio and pool.
Themaster suite, with wood-paneled ceiling, includes a built-in sitting area. Other amenities include a home theater, an office, and a Zenlike outdoor area with a hot tub.
There’s also a serious green thumb in the family, with raised planters and vegetables growing on one part of the property.
In a serene spot, the privately placed home is nevertheless centrally located, minutes to downtown Woodside, and is also easily accessible to surrounding tech hubs.
Woodman, a surfer who grew up in nearby Menlo Park, started his action-video-camera company in 2002, prompted by his desire to film himself while on his surfboard.
In 2014, Woodman took GoPro public, and continued to put out new products. In 2015, the popular camera and his majority stake in the company placed him on the Forbes billionaire list, with an estimated net worth of $1.75 billion.
However, by 2016, he was no longer a billionaire. The company faced a drop in stock prices, with lower than expected sales, job layoffs, and a failed drone product. Despite GoPro’s continued challenges as a public company, its wearable and waterproof cameras are in use everywhere, including by Olympic athletes like snowboarder Shaun White, director Michael Bay, and the NFL.
At the dawn of his NBA career, Russell Westbrook made a smart off-court move and purchased a starter home. Eleven years later, the eight-time All-Star is now looking to dish the modest house in Edmond, OK, to a buyer for $429,500.
By baller standards, the Edmond home is a far cry from where the Houston Rockets point guard lives now, a multimillion-dollar Brentwood, CA, mansion, near neighbor LeBron James. He also owns a much larger Oklahoma home he purchased in 2012.
Even a decade ago, Westbrook had a keen eye for real estate.
He purchased this place in 2008 for $383,500, just months after joining the Oklahoma City Thunder. The suburban abode measures 3,011 square feet and has three bedrooms and 2.5 baths.
Russell Westbrook’s Oklahoma home
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Newly redone with neutral hues
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Family room
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Kitchen and breakfast nook
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Dining room
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Master suite
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Pool with basketball hoops
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Boasting an updated interior, the traditional-style home comes features an open layout and neutral palette.
The remodeled kitchen and bathrooms have quartz counters. The living room is lined with large windows, and the kitchen comes with a breakfast nook. Adjoining the kitchen is a family room, which opens out to the backyard.
Out back, the quarter-acre lot features a grill, a fire pit, and a pool with two basketball hoops and a waterfall.
Westbrook has been making headlines in real estate of late. He recently lowered the price of his Beverly Hills, CA, home from $6 million to $5.69 million. The Southern California native bought the luxury abode in 2015 for $4.65 million from reality TV star Scott Disick, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Westbrook recently upgraded to a brand-new $19.75 million, 9,000-square-foot compound on a half-acre with a 38-foot lap pool in posh Brentwood, according to the Times.
Now 30, Westbrook starred for the Thunder for 11 seasons until being traded to the Rockets this summer. The 2016-17 MVP led the league in scoring in 2014–15 and 2016–17.
