Weekly Roundup: NYC adjusted prices, SoHo’s highs, upward trending rates, $117M record price, houseplant pointers, recovery skeptics

Housing prices below 2008 peak, sales 21.8 percent lower than 2007 peak

But 2012 median lowest since 2004 adjusted for inflation

Beachfront houses wrecked by Sandy being sold ‘as is’

Assembly, Senate pass renewal of co-op/condo tax abatement

Building in Williamsburg tops list of 10 best-selling new developments in 2012

Region’s foreclosures tick up in November

Boerum Hill beats out Dumbo as Brooklyn’s top neighborhood, while SoHo and TriBeCa priciest in Manhattan during 2012

Maintenance fees now average $1.70 per square foot, up 30 percent since 2008

Lawsuit aims to collect rents paid by tenants citywide who live in apartments made uninhabitable after Sandy

Multi-talented writer finally does good all by himself in sale of $11.25 million Hollywood home

Brooklyn Nets guard makes successful $15.8 million play for Tribeca penthouse

Barbara visits

Weekly Roundup: Resales off from 2011. . . More!

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 the other of today’s posts and look for Out and About early next week.

There’s no tin roof on this newly listed Bel-Air estate

Former NYC City Council speaker buys $3 million apartment out of his old district

Cartoonist’s East Side lair sells for $531 million

Actor finally unloads his $5 million condo in Tribeca

She’s leaving Manhattan for homes in three other areas, but Texas is out

April resales ease from March, plunge

When push came to shove, a purported buyer from Singapore shouldered me aside (as I sort of expected)

It’s wise to proceed with caution with inquiries from around the world. (NASA photo)

It began with an e-mail.

The sender said he is a businessman writing from Singapore after reading about a more than $8 million foreclosure in this blog.

This Mr. “X” wanted details and in a subsequent telephone conversation disclosed his plan of buying more such properties in Manhattan to “park” cash with no expectation of an immediate return.

The property he wanted is in foreclosure for more than $8 million.  That wouldn’t be a bad sale for me, even at half that sum.

But my antennae were up.

Having a contact like the e-mail