Hoboken Real Estate: News and Notes

Did anyone see what came across the wire yesterday...

Monday, May 3rd, 2010, 4:14 pm

CitiMortgage — the mortgage finance arm of Citigroup (C: 4.26 -3.40%) — today lowered its jumbo mortgage rates “for highly credit worthy borrowers” according to an e-mailed statement.

Jumbo mortgages typically fall above the $417,000 conforming loan limits. As of today, Citi will offer 30-year fixed-rate jumbo mortgages at 5.625%. It will also offer five-year adjustable-rate mortgages at 4.875%. Recent jumbo rates regularly top 6%.

Good News if you are a seller with an home priced over $525k to sell.

....Heard that with the new zoning regulations that the backlog for any building project that needs zoning approvals is nine months. Great to see Hoboken working for it's citizens. Heck, I might be able to get an answer from Bank Of America of a short sale faster than that. Here's an idea...charge more money for the zoning applications. use the money to pay more people to be on the zoning board. Split the zoning board in two and handle twice as many applications in the same time. ...upsetting the apple cart of political power and entitlements again. forget it.

....Bike lane on Hudson Street? Rumor has it that the face in parking was replaced by parallel parking in order to put a bike lane in. Where are those parking spaces going? Does the city think that the cars will just "disappear"? The cynical me thinks that fewer parking spaces means more illegal parking and more illegal parking revenue. Time to buy another boot van. Here's an idea: Let's make all of the parking around city hall resident parking. How about our esteemed Hoboken employees get treated like the rest of us who pay taxes here. Would love to "The Commissioner Of Some Bloated Department The City Doesn't Need But Who Has A Cousin" have to circle the block for 45 minutes and not have any quarters. (Yes, I sit up late at night after watching Jack Bauer and I think of what would Jack do.)