Louetta R. Clark

How coronavirus changed home buying for good

Louetta R. Clark 6 days ago

The economy isn’t fully open across the country and the unemployment rate is still double-digits, but home shopping has roared back.

“It has bounced back incredibly quickly, more quickly than anyone thought,” Spencer Rascoff Zillow (Z) co-founder told Yahoo Finance’s The Final Round. 

Pending home sales jumped by a record 44% in May, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s the biggest one month jump since the survey started in 2001.

Transaction volume is returning to normal, but the experience of buying and selling is anything but conventional.

‘Point and click’ home buying on the way

As with other industries, Covid-19 has accelerated technological trends. Rascoff, who recently launched dot.LA, a news site covering Southern California’s burgeoning tech scene, is seeing transformational changes in the marketplace, driven by meaningful technological advancements.

“Things like virtual tours, transaction management – that’s entirely online –

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37 Clever Items That Will Open Up Your Small Space

Louetta R. Clark 1 week ago

Living the small space lifestyle is an ongoing battle of trying to do more with the less. Sometimes, after an exhaustive search, we strike the furniture jackpot with a piece that epitomizes our spacial, stylistic, and budgetary trifecta. But just because these home buys are a rarity, doesn’t mean that there aren’t multiple viable options out there…It’s a matter of finding the time to hunt them down.

If turning small-space furniture hunting into a full-time job isn’t in the cards right now, don’t sweat it — because we’ve got you and your tiny apartment’s back. Every month we’re hula-hooping our way through the best buys in budget, size, and statement-making — from chic nesting tables to decorative room dividers, work-from-home space solutions, sleek units with extra shelving, and beyond.

Scroll on for the under $150 furniture finds that will maximize tight spaces while keeping minimalism and style top of

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the stars who’ve called a luxury hotel home

Louetta R. Clark 1 week ago
Marilyn Monroe outside Bungalow 7 at the Beverly Hill Hotel - 'The Beverly Hills Hotel: The First 100 Years' by Robert Anderson
Marilyn Monroe outside Bungalow 7 at the Beverly Hill Hotel – ‘The Beverly Hills Hotel: The First 100 Years’ by Robert Anderson

While there may be some trepidation about what it will feel like to stay in a hotel – grand or otherwise – post-pandemic, there is also a palpable excitement that finally, for the first time, we can actually consider doing so. Because nothing beats a few nights in a really good one, where you feel welcomed, cared for, and cosseted, in an unapologetically no-strings-attached way.

This can’t have escaped Liz Hurley’s ex, Steve Bing, the enigmatic multi-millionaire real estate tycoon, film-maker and political donor who fell to his death from his 27th floor apartment in Century City, Los Angeles earlier this week. Famously commitment-shy, Bing checked into the Hotel Bel-Air for a night in the early 1990s and stayed for nine years.

Grace Kelly had already paved

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Tour a Brooklyn Brownstone With Equal Parts Tradition and Whimsy

Louetta R. Clark 2 weeks ago

Interior designer Gillian Dubin and her husband, civil rights and criminal defense attorney Josh Dubin, feel a deep connection to Brooklyn. The couple has not only lived in the borough for the past 20 years, but Josh comes from a long line of Brooklynites. “My great-grandfather was a tailor in East New York, and my grandfather was a photographer in Flatbush,” he says. “I’ve always been fascinated by the history of Brooklyn.” When he and his wife began searching for a new home in Park Slope, they were drawn to a brownstone from 1903, the kind of construction that gives the neighborhood its quintessential residential charm. “The house was not in good shape—it had been converted into three units—but it maintained most of its original details, and I really appreciated that,” says Gillian, who established her namesake design studio three years ago. 

<div class="caption"> “Things we didn’t know we really coveted: a fireplace in the bathroom,” notes Gillian. What was formerly a bedroom on the second floor became the master bath, which has two marble-topped sinks with tapered legs from <a href="https://sinklegs.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:Palmer Industries" class="link rapid-noclick-resp">Palmer Industries</a>. </div>
“Things we didn’t know we really coveted: a
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