Press
BUYER AND CELLARS
BUILDER CLEANING
HOMES OF FURNITURE
BYLINE: By Randi Feigenbaum. STAFF WRITER
SECTION: REAL ESTATE; Page C03
February 12, 1999, Friday, ALL EDITIONS
NEED SOME furniture? Builder Steven Klar may have what you're looking for.
For the first time, Klar is selling the furniture - everything from beds to tables to sofas - that has graced his company's model homes. During an event this weekend, The Klar Organization, one of the top builders on Long Island, will play retailer.
Klar said that the boom in new-home sales in 1998 led the model homes on several of his projects to sell out faster than he expected. As a result, he found himself with 26 furnished model homes at the start of 1998, but only 14 at the end of the year. After putting aside furniture for future models, Klar decided to sell the rest at discount.
He purchased a building on the east side of Route 110, where Jennifer Convertibles is now, in part to store the extra items. But he will use 10,000 square feet of that space for a furniture sale, hoping to sell out completely so he can then rent to an additional tenant.
Klar was quick to point out that it would be a "furniture row" of sorts on the stretch of Route 110 in Farmingdale.
"It's just like Seamans, but cheaper," he said. "There's something for everybody."
How much cheaper? Klar said an Ethan Allen $ 3,500 set of sofa and two chairs will sell for $ 1,500. He pointed out that the model homes were never lived in, so the furniture was similar to floor samples in a furniture store.
The sale will start today from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and continue tomorrow, Sunday and Monday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Klar noted that he has made arrangements with a moving company to be available for customer deliveries. -- -- --
The technological boom continues for Fannie Mae, with the introduction of a product that includes the secondary mortgage provider's desktop underwriting program, hardware components and loan origination software. Called the Technology Pak, the bundle combines Fannie Mae's existing software with that offered by Calyx Software, a technology company that specializes in the financial services industry.
Targeted to smaller lenders, who might not have the hardware to support Fannie Mae's already-developed computer software, the Technology Pak offers a less complex package than what larger mortgage bankers might require.
"Not every town in America is served by a really big bank," said David Brashear, Fannie Mae's vice president of technology marketing. "This is a great way to extend some of the benefits to small lenders."
Brashear said he hoped the Pak would also extend Fannie Mae's reach to lenders it has not worked with before.
"The banking environment is dominated by small lenders," he added. "This meets a certain niche in the marketplace." -- -- --
Temporary repairs and adjustments have shut down - temporarily - the local Multiple Listing Service's Web site (www.mlsli.com), automatically sending buyers to Microsoft's HomeAdvisor home page.
The local site has always been the source of all the service's listings, while also connecting to individual real estate agents home pages. Until it returns to full operations, home buyers will have to search through a national site for Long Island listings.
A Multiple Listing Service spokeswoman said the company's decision to join HomeAdvisor late last year provided an opportunity for technical adjustments and a temporary closure of the local site. HomeAdvisor, she said, includes all the listings www.mlsli.com would. "No time's ever a great time to do it," she said. "But we knew at least we had all the information up on the Microsoft site."
The spokeswoman said she expected the site to return to operation this week.
The competition has used the temporary shut-down as an opportunity to jump into the fray. New York Homes Net (www.nyhomesnet.com) and its Multiple Listing Site of New York (www.mlsny.com) sent a mass electronic mail to Long Island real estate agents asking them to consider joining their service.
The mlsny.com site only has a few hundred listings in Nassau, Suffolk and Queens Counties. Long Island's Multiple Listing Service, however, includes several thousand.
Copyright 1999 Newsday, Inc. Reprinted with permission.