Weekly Roundup: Supply in U.S. and NYC dwindles, rates keep falling, Oprah takes bath, hell is hoarder at home, Shiller’s glass half empty

Obama slept here, and so can you for $2,400 a month

Median price of new condos up 15.4 percent from year ago, inventory down 19.1 percent

Q2 prices in Brooklyn, Queens edge up as inventory plunges

With prices falling in the Hamptons, sales pick up

Boards only set policies and six other surprises that rookie members may confront

New rental units in the city undergoing shrinkage

New handful of properties set to come on market at $90 million or more

Retired detective names safest, riskiest units in apartment building

Sales volume, property values remain well below peak levels, says NYU’s Furman Center

Number of residential building permits skyrockets, especially in Manhattan

Super rich

Weekly Roundup: Best and worst cities are listed

Here’s your chance to catch up with news included to inform, enlighten and perhaps even entertain you. To read about The Big Apple, check out another of today’s three posts.

AN EMMY WINNER LISTS HER HOME IN SOUTHBURY, CONN.

BILLIONAIRE OWNER OF A WEEKLY PET-SUPPLIES COMPANIES SPENDS MORE THAN CHICKEN FEED FOR A SOHO PENTHOUSE

CONGRESSWOMAN’S HOUSE, TWICE IN DEFAULT, NOW IS LISTED AS A SHORT SALE

ACTRESS PICKS UP A PRETTY FINE PENTHOUSE

BROKER DISPELS RUMORS THAT BUYER OF TRUSTED MAN’S SUMMER HOME LOOKS LIKE LADY GAGA

FED OFFICIAL SAYS IMPEDIMENTS TO HOME SALES

Even Bernie Madoff wouldn’t go this far

Scanning the newspaper the other day, I became intrigued with the advertisement reproduced above at its actual size.  It  managed to attract my attention even though I fall depressingly short of the amount requested.

Not only did the author’s rudimentary grasp of grammar and spelling – which is more evident on his various Web sites – interest me, but I was astonished to read that someone actually was promising, promising,to double some dupe’s money in three years.

Now, I don’t know what, if any, laws the company might be breaking or whether, if so, it is breaking the law wittingly.

However, I learned at my late father’s knee that – everybody chime in – if something seems to good to be true, then it must not be true.

So I went to the Web site in the ad, which in itself was not in the least illuminating.  It provided a Park Avenue address, though no suite number, plus the telephone number that is printed above.  Looks like a cell phone number, right?  I’m at this point thinking “fly by night.”

Though sounding good, the advice is questionable

Those are some tomaters. Photo by Chris Breeze on Flickr.

She has been selling real estate for no less than a quarter of a century.  Her record runs to hundreds of transactions worth a total of hundreds of millions of dollars.

There isn’t a layout in a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that she doesn’t know.

Hardly an apartment has gone on the market that she hasn’t viewed one time or another.

That’s “Lily,” who told me the other day about how she sweated for two days over a marketing plan that a condo owner who wants to sell his property asked her to provide.  Perhaps he’s read advice to make the request in a book or on the Web, but it’s advice that owner should have ignored.