Kimberly & Daryl's Sotheby's Property Update

Economic Stimulus

President Obama signed the stimulus bill on Tuesday and it includes several provisions to stimulate the real estate market. While we would have preferred to see a bigger credit that applied to all home purchasers, there were some positive changes that directly impact our region.

First, and perhaps most importantly to our area, the increased conforming and FHA loan limits, which were set to expire at the end of 2008, have been extended through December 31, 2009. The limits for DC and Montgomery County remain at $729,750, giving more buyers access to mortgages and today’s historically low interest rates.

Second, the national home buyer tax credit increased to $8,000 and the repayment requirement was eliminated. General guidelines are as follows:

First-time buyers can claim a credit worth $8,000 or 10% of the home's value, whichever is less - on their 2008 or 2009 taxes.
To qualify for the credit, the purchase must be made between January 1, 2009 and November 30, 2009. Buyers may not have owned a home for the past three years to qualify as a "first time" buyer. They must also live in the house for at least three years, or they will be obligated to pay back the credit.
Additionally, there are income restrictions: To qualify, buyers must make less than $75,000 for singles or $150,000 for couples. (Higher-income buyers may receive a partial credit.)
Applying for the credit will be easy - or at least as easy as doing your income taxes. Just claim it on your return. No other forms or papers have to be filed. Taxpayers who have already completed their returns can file amended returns for 2008 to claim the credit.
If you are buying in DC and don’t qualify for the national credit, you may still qualify for the DC homebuyer credit.

HOPES are high in some circles that the Obama presidency will return some luster to Washington’s image as a glittering cultural and social whirl. In reality, the last two low-key decades were more an exception than the rule. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Washington had at least a thousand points of light in a vibrant social landscape.

Most of those palatial buildings along Massachusetts Avenue or clinging to the hillsides of Rock Creek Park were built not as embassies but as homes for the country’s wealthy and well-born, who came to town for at least part of the year (usually January for the opening of Congress) to rub shoulders with the political elite. Then there were the folks who lived there full time, serving in the government or diplomatic corps, and others drawn to the city by its heady mix of culture and power.

With them came the trappings of a refined life — important art collections, libraries and fine furnishings — all neatly installed in their showplace homes.

Many remnants of this more lavish era remain in the form of art-filled mansions and historic house museums that tell a fascinating story of political, social and cultural life in the nation’s capital. Most throw in a good bit of personality along with the Picassos and fine porcelain. So while the world obsesses about the new residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, now is a great time to check out some of the district’s other noteworthy addresses.

At the top of the heap is Hillwood — the former home of the heiress and arts patron Marjorie Merriweather Post — a museum that bills itself as the place “Where Fabulous Lives.” Built in the 1930s, the sprawling Georgian-style brick mansion is set amid 25 acres of landscaped gardens and woodlands.

Post bought the estate in 1955 and remodeled it to house her extensive art collection. Outside are a greenhouse with hundreds of orchids, a Russian dacha and an Adirondack camp building.

Heiress to a cereal fortune, Post, who died in 1973 at age 86, knew how to live on a grand scale, and poking around her former home, one gets the sense that she admired the same trait in others. She had a special affinity for Marie Antoinette and often dressed as the ill-fated French queen for her gala parties. An exhibition called “An Invitation to the Ball,” opening on March 14, will highlight a selection of her costumes from the 1920s.

One gets a glimpse of the quality of the collection and a sense of Post’s legendary hospitality upon entering the main house. “La Nuit” (“The Night”), a sensuous life-size painting of a curvy female nude partly draped in a sheer black veil, by the 19th-century French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, hangs in the back of the coatroom. It seems undervalued there, until one discovers that the coatroom was originally the men’s room, for which Post thought the picture an apt selection.

The rest of the 36-room house is equally extravagant with room after room of exquisite 18th-century French decorative arts like elaborate marquetry furniture, tapestries and seemingly countless sets of Sèvres and other fine porcelain — one of the audio tours is even titled “Kings, Queens, and Soup Tureens.”

Post’s third husband, Joseph E. Davies, was ambassador to the Soviet Union, and it was there in the late 1930s that she began to acquire an array of Russian decorative arts — gold-embroidered liturgical vestments, religious icons and imperial regalia — as Stalin was selling off the nationalized collections to finance industrialization. Post eventually amassed some 80 works by the legendary Peter Carl Fabergé, ranging from bibelots like a stamp moistener to the famous Catherine the Great Easter Egg, presented by Czar Nicholas II to his mother in 1914.