Informal Southwest elegance and luxury appointments define this divine 3 bedroom villa with marvelous fairway views, located on a private brick-paved…

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¡Hot Picks! for Valentines Day

Coyote Café Cantina
132 E. Water Street
505.983.1615
www.coyotecafe.com
Warm weather dining, April through October.  Great BBQ duck quesadillas & mango margaritas.
Lunch, Dinner $$

Gabriel’s
Exit 176 Cuyamungue, Highway 84/285 (5 minutes north of the Santa Fe Opera)
505.455.7000
www.gabrielsrestaurant.com
Cuisine of Old Mexico.  The fresh guacamole prepared table-side is fantastic; probably the best you’ll find anywhere. Enjoy with a great margarita or two.
Lunch, Dinner $$$

LewAllen Contemporary
125 W. Palace Avenue
505.988.8997
1613 Paseo de Peralta (The Railyard)
505.988.3250
info@lewallengalleries.com
www.lewallengalleries.com
One of the oldest and most important venues for leading contemporary and modern art.  Featured artists include Forest Moses, Woody Gwynn, and Robert Natkin, Bill Barrett and Emily Mason.  Currently on exhibit through June 10^th is the work of acclaimed color abstractionist, Emily Mason.

Andrea Fisher – Fine Pottery
100 W. San Francisco
505.986.1234
info@andreafisherpottery.com
www.andreafisherpottery.com
The premier gallery for Native American pottery, featuring the work of Maria Martinez of San Idelfonso Pueblo, and over 500 other artists.  For both a remarkable visual experience and a fascinating education, do not miss this exceptional gallery.

Robert R. Bailey
150 Washington Avenue
505.983.8803
steven.robertrbailey@gmail.com
Santa Fe’s world-class clothiers for men; fabulous quality and taste for the truly discriminating. Featuring an impressive collection, including St.Croix, Robert Graham, Tommy Bahama, Nat Nast and Canali.  Terrific place for accessories, including gorgeous ties, cufflinks etc. for the man in your life.

Uli’s Fashions
208 W. San Francisco Street, # B
505.986.0577
www.ulisfashions.com
Milan… Paris… New Mexico! Thanks to Uli’s in Santa Fe, fashionable clothing for men, women and children flourishes in Northern New Mexico. They have everything from creative casual clothing to formal attire (weddings are their specialty). They carry an eclectic array of innovative gifts and jewelry as well. Uli’s is unique. Thanks to the insight and hard work of Uli and her dedicated staff who are trained to work with any shape, size and personality. At Uli’s, clothes are empowerments for the soul and mind.

More home buyers may jump off the sidelines this spring as they get more urgent about purchasing a home, fearing that home price and rate increases are on the horizon. Housing surveys in recent weeks have shown that more Americans are seeing now a great time to purchase a home. In the most recent survey, 73 percent of Americans say now is a good time to buy, according to the latest Fannie Mae Housing Survey conducted in March. That’s up from 70 percent in February who said it was a great time to buy. ”Conditions are coming together to encourage people to want to buy homes,” says Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae’s chief economist. “With an increasing share of consumers expecting higher rates and home prices over the next 12 months, some may feel that renting is becoming more costly and that home ownership is a more compelling housing choice.” Indeed, more buyer urgency is evident in the market. Thirty-three percent of those surveyed by Fannie say they expect home prices soon to increase, which is the highest percentage in a year. What’s more, nearly 40 percent say they expect rates to rise in the next year too, which is also up from previous surveys. Coupled with that, 48 percent of Americans say they expect rents to continue to climb, and 44 percent say they expect their financial situation to improve in the next year.  Source: MSN Real Estate

Large investor firms are taking advantage of the deep discounts found in some housing markets, and they’re finding that buying one or two homes is just not enough — they want thousands. The investors are then renting the homes out to tenants, banking on returns from the rental income, which they say is better than other investments at the moment. Landlords usually are individuals or small investment firms that own a few homes. “Nobody has ever tried this on such a large scale, and critics worry these new investors could face big challenges managing large portfolios of dispersed rental houses,” notes a recent article at The New York Times. Investors are seeing big opportunities in the real estate market, with nearly 650,000 foreclosed homes owned by lenders and 710,000 in the foreclosure process, according to housing data from RealtyTrac. Meanwhile, rental demand is rising and so are rents. Economists say that investors buying the homes by bulk could help to stabilize the housing market. “If you have a lot of foreclosures in one community you will improve everybody’s home values if you take them off the market,” Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Mesirow Financial, told The New York Times. “If those homes are renovated and even rented, it is a lot better than having them stand empty.”  Source: The New York Times

Home remodeling activity is expected to pick up later this year after “two years of bouncing around a bottom,” thanks to stronger pending home sales and continuing low interest rates, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University said. An unusually mild winter in many parts of the country also contributed to the pick-up, said the center, which projects that annual spending on home improvements will see “healthy growth” in 2012, ending the year up 5.9 percent. “Hopefully, we’re finally moving beyond simple volatility in the home improvement spending numbers to a period of sustained growth,” Eric S. Belsky, managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, said in a statement. “The recent upturn we’ve seen in home sales should translate into more remodeling activity later this year.”  Source: The Boston Globe