Historic Hamilton firehouse featured on Zillow Gone Wild: 'These bones are a steal!!'
The historic Hose House No. 5 on North Ninth Street "definitely needs a little love,'' said listing agent Arthur Greenlee IV of Exp Realty in West Chester. But the property, which was listed for $100,000, already has a pending offer for a little over asking price, Greenlee said.
"I knew the right person with the right eye would be willing to put in the work to restore it,'' he said.
Built in 1900, the firehouse served until 1959 and stood vacant for decades before it was purchased by a series of potential rehabbers, Greenlee said.
It last sold for $66,000 in 2017 to a private buyer who took steps to renovate the building before deciding "to go in a different direction,'' Greenlee said.
Listing photos show the interior of the more than 3,000-square-foot property has been largely gutted, but the exterior remains intact.
Zillow Gone Wild posted the listing photos on its popular Instagram account with more than two million followers, in addition to Facebook and its online newsletter.
Social media reactions to the listing varied from dazzled to dumbfounded:
"I'd make it into a Ghostbusters house!,'' read one Facebook comment.
Others were more impressed: "I have never seen anything with more potential!! Oh to have the money to sink into this… if I did I'd buy this in a heartbeat!!!,'' read another comment on Facebook
It didn't take long for prospective buyers to show interest.
"We listed it Thursday and got two offers the same day and went under contract Friday,'' Greenlee said. "Zillow also called Thursday and said they wanted to feature it on Zillow Gone Wild, but they didn't put it up until Sunday.''
Greenlee said the old firehouse is zoned for residential and commercial use, but the new buyer intends to renovate the building as a private residence.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Old Hamilton firehouse hits the market and Zillow Gone Wild
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CNBC
33 minutes ago
- CNBC
Figma CEO's path from college dropout and Thiel fellow to tech billionaire
Mark Zuckerberg may be the most famous college-dropout-turned-tech-billionaire. Dylan Field is the latest, after his design startup Figma soared in its stock market debut this week. The two entrepreneurs have something else in common: close ties to Peter Thiel. Zuckerberg got his first outside check for Facebook from Thiel in 2004, soon before leaving Harvard University to build his social network in Silicon Valley. Facebook went public in 2012, the same year that Field scored a Thiel Fellowship, which gives money "to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom." Over 300 people have been selected since its inception in 2011. Field, now 33, was part of the second batch of Thiel fellows, a group of 20 entrepreneurs who each took home $100,000. The program doubled that sum earlier this year. Like Zuckerberg, Field came to Thiel from the Ivy League, having spent two and a half years at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. On Thursday, Figma's stock price more than tripled in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It rose again on Friday, wrapping up the week with a fully diluted market cap above $71 billion. Field's stake is worth about $6.6 billion. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is now the world's third-richest person, with a net worth of over $260 billion. While the contours of Field's story may sound familiar, he's a very different kind of character. "Dylan is, by far, the most humble billionaire I've ever met," said Joshua Browder, CEO of legal services startup DoNotPay and a former Thiel fellow. Mike Gibson, who used to help run the fellows program as vice president for grants at the nonprofit Thiel Foundation, contrasts Field with another tech luminary. "He's kind of like the anti-Steve Jobs," said Gibson, a co-founder of 1517 Fund, a venture firm that prides itself on investing in dropouts. "When it comes to Jobs' legend as this hard-charging a--hole, Dylan is the opposite." The Apple co-founder, who dropped out of college after one semester, died of cancer in 2011, as his company was on its way to becoming the most valuable business in the world. Field was poised to officially enter the billionaire ranks almost three years ago. With Figma having emerged as a leader in web-based tools for designing apps and websites, Adobe agreed to snap up its budding rival for $20 billion. But regulators in the U.K. said the tie-up would've hurt competition, and the companies scrapped the transaction in late 2023. Adobe payed Figma a $1 billion breakup fee. Figma's IPO this week represented not only a massive valuation markup for the company but also served as a banner event for Silicon Valley, which has seen a dearth of high-profile IPOs since the market cratered in early 2022 due to soaring inflation and rising interest rates. "The most important thing to remind myself of, the team of, is share price is a moment in time," Field told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday. "We're going to see all sorts of behavior probably today, over the weeks ahead." Figma declined to make Field available for an interview for this story. Field's trek back to the Bay Area, where he'd grown up, began with a TechCrunch article about the fellowship. He submitted his application two hours before the deadline, on New Year's Eve of 2011, while he was a junior at Brown. He left out his SAT scores. "It is my belief that the SAT is a poor reflection of aptitude and can easily be gamed," he wrote in his application, which he posted on LinkedIn years later. In the essay section, he was asked to offer a highly controversial take. "Chocolate is repulsive," he wrote. "Even the smell of it makes me want to vomit." In response to a question about how he was going to change the world, Field said he was going to build better software for drones, and that he would "cofound a company with the smartest programmer I know and work on this problem." That co-founder was Evan Wallace, who had been a teaching assistant for some of Field's courses at Brown. Wallace was technologically gifted, earning the nickname "computer Jesus," or CJ. But he was already 20, meaning he was too old to be eligible for a Thiel Fellowship. Field scored the $100,000 from Thiel, and shared it with Wallace, convincing him to leave his academic pursuits. The pair moved into a small apartment in Palo Alto, California. The drone software plan had gone out the window. Wallace wanted to develop something related to WebGL, a graphics rendering system for web browsers. A year later, they were showing investors a slick browser-based demo that allowed for the movement of a ball in a pool of water. The obvious competitive target was Adobe, which was ending development of Fireworks, an app design product that it acquired with the 2005 Macromedia purchase. "We thought, 'Wait, maybe there's an opportunity here,'" Field said on a podcast earlier this year. "What we're trying to do is make it so that anyone can be creative, by creating free, simple creative tools in the browser," Field said in a 2012 interview for a CNBC special on the Thiel Fellowship. In 2013, the founders started talking with investors about raising a seed round. Field showed the pool water demo to John Lilly of Greylock Partners at a Starbucks in Palo Alto. Lilly had previously been CEO of Mozilla, where an engineer developed software that led to WebGL. He was impressed with what he was seeing, but he didn't think it had much economic potential. Figma took on seed funding from Index Ventures and other investors. The founders assembled a small group of employees at an office in Palo Alto. Progress was slow. Early versions of the product failed to impress potential users. Field was micromanaging. When Figma would show the product to companies in the Bay Area, reception wasn't always great. Stress was building. Lilly, who ended up leading Figma's Series A round in 2014, came to the company's San Francisco headquarters the following August as struggles were mounting. Employees wanted changes. "We both heard it," said Danny Rimer, the Index partner who led the seed funding, referring to conversations he and Lilly were having with staffers about Field. "We sat down with him and explained to him the situation," Rimer said. "We heard it and we sort of said, 'Look, this is an impasse. You're going to have to adapt and change.' And he heard it and he changed. I think that's such a great character trait of Dylan, is to hear the information, be objective about it, process it and accept it and act accordingly, if it makes sense." Around that time, Sho Kuwamoto joined the company. Kuwamoto brought with him experience from Macromedia and Adobe. Four months later, Figma launched its debut product in a free preview. Field got involved with users. He replied to people on social media who were posting about Figma, telling them they were receiving access to the preview. He also sought out prominent designers. Companies like Coda and Uber became early adopters. Some designers were excited by the idea of sharing documents by copying and pasting a URL, instead of having to deal with versions, formats and updates. Figma operated in the cloud, providing all the necessary computing infrastructure, so users didn't need their own powerful graphics cards. It wasn't until September 2016 that Figma made the design editor available for free to the general public and made it possible for multiple designers to make changes in a single file simultaneously. That became the killer feature. The software started gaining traction inside Microsoft. But there was an issue. Microsoft feared that Figma's lack of a clear business model might lead to a burial in the startup graveyard. Jon Friedman, a design executive at the software giant, visited Figma's headquarters to deliver the message, Field told CNBC in 2022. "Look, we're all worried you're going to die as a company," Field recalled Friedman telling him. The following year, Figma introduced its first paid tier. By the time venture stalwart Sequoia Capital came on board in 2019, Figma was a hot commodity, raising its Series C round at a $440 million valuation. Sequoia partner Andrew Reed said some of his firm's portfolio companies had started migrating to Figma, and founders were using it for pitch decks. "Companies often will show prototypes in board meetings of new products they want to build, and so the first thing we saw a lot of Figma links for was that," Reed said in an interview this week. "It was a very easy investment," Reed said. "We went through some of our old investment voting data. I think Figma might have been the highest vote we ever had for an investment." Sequoia's extensive roster of winners over the decades includes Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Zoom and WhatsApp. Financial analysts covering Adobe started asking about Figma. Adobe, which had released the XD app for user experience design, responded, adding the startup to its official list of competitors. But Adobe's market capitalization sat above $170 billion, and Figma wasn't even a "unicorn," a status reserved for startups worth at least $1 billion. Field told Forbes that some job candidates were hesitant to join because of the modest valuation. In 2020, the company raised a funding round from Andreessen Horowitz at a $2 billion valuation. Then came Covid. Offices closed. The world went remote overnight. Figma's collaboration capability suddenly became critical to the way many more people worked. "We asked ourselves: how can we help teams connect, have fun and enter a flow state during the earliest stages of the design process?" Field later wrote on Twitter. The result was FigJam, a digital whiteboard that became Figma's second product, and represented a key step toward diversification. The Adobe noise continued to get louder. In 2020, Field had discussions with Adobe executive Scott Belsky about a partnership or acquisition, but Field chose to stay the course. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen talked to Field about a possible deal in early 2021, but again the Figma CEO demurred, opting to raise a round at a $10 billion valuation. "Our goal is to be Figma not Adobe," Field wrote in a 2021 tweet. The environment quickly changed. By early 2022, with the Fed lifting interest rates to fight inflation, investors were selling out of high-growth tech and rotating into businesses with predictable profits. Sequoia was encouraging its startups to reduce costs. Belsky again approached Field in April of that year, this time alongside David Wadhwani, who was leading Adobe's digital media business. "Mr. Field expressed openness to understanding the terms of a potential acquisition of Figma by Adobe, and Mr. Field, Mr. Belsky and Mr. Wadhwani continued their discussion of the potential benefits of a combination the following week," Adobe stated in a regulatory filing. Field was considering the implications of the rise of artificial intelligence. "Look, when we did the deal with Adobe in the first place, my head space in 2022 was, "Oh my god, AI is coming. This is clearly exponential as a technology. I don't know what this does to us. Is this one-tenth our market, is it 10x our market? What does it mean for creatives and designers?" Field said in an interview with The Verge last year. "And I was like, it's better to team up in this world with Adobe and to navigate this together and to figure this out together than it is to go it alone." In September 2022, Adobe agreed to buy Figma for about $20 billion, announcing that Field would remain in charge of his part of the business and would report to Wadhwani. "Adobe has a unique opportunity to usher in a world of collaborative creativity," Narayen told analysts on a conference call the day of the agreement. "In my conversations with Dylan at Figma, it became abundantly clear that together we could accelerate this new vision, delivering great value to our customers and shareholders." That opportunity never came. An intensifying regulatory environment in the U.S. and Europe had made sizable tech deals more burdensome. Adobe was suddenly in the crosshairs, and the transaction was hitting repeated hurdles. "We're worried this deal could stifle innovation and lead to higher costs for companies that rely on Figma and Adobe's digital tools — as they cease to compete to provide customers with new and better products," Sorcha O'Carroll, an official at the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, said in a press release in mid-2023. Around that time, Field announced another step toward product diversification by introducing Dev Mode, which turns Figma designs into source code that can serve as a starting point for software developers. The reveal came at Figma's Config user conference in San Francisco, which attracted 8,000 attendees. The U.K.'s investigation dragged on for months. Field was pulling double duty running the company and engaging with regulators. Adobe had said it expected to complete the deal in 2023, but time was running out. Regulators were proposing remedies that the parties didn't like. "Even toward the final months, there were these moments of, 'Oh, this is going to go through,' and moments of, 'F---, what are we doing?'" Field told The Verge. "And obviously at the end, there's a mutual understanding of,' This decision has been made for us and let's call it.'" On a Sunday in December 2023, Field gathered board members for a 10-minute call, informing them that the deal was off. The official statement followed early on Monday morning. "It's frustrating and sad that we're not able to complete this," Field told The New York Times. Not everyone in Field's orbit saw it that way. Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra, a friend of Field's and longtime Figma user, said the whole ordeal was having an impact. "You could see it in his face," Mehrotra said of Field, adding that he was relieved when he learned Figma would remain independent. "He was getting older right in front of us." But Figma had some business concerns. Its net dollar retention rate, a measurement of the company's ability to sell more to existing customers, slid from 159% in the first quarter of 2023 to 122% by the end of the year, according to Figma's IPO prospectus. Figma chalked it up to a tough comparison from the year before, thanks to the launch of FigJam, and economic uncertainty that caused some clients to reduce seat counts. The retention rate bounced back to 132% in the first quarter of 2025. During the 2023 winter holidays, Field considered ways to rally the workforce. After the new year, he announced internally that Figma would give extra equity to employees who joined or received promotions following the acquisition announcement, because the valuation was going back down to $10 billion. He said any employees who wished to leave would get three months of severance, with no hard feelings. Fewer than 5% of staffers took him up on the offer. As Figma pursues a go-it-alone strategy, it faces an existential question: Is the company ready for a future dominated by AI? In May, Field took the stage at Figma's user conference before 8,500 attendees at San Francisco's Moscone Center, wearing a black "Config 2025" T-shirt. He walked the crowd through a slew of new products, including Figma Make, which draws on Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a large language model from AI startup Anthropic. "With Figma Make, you could take an existing design and prompt your way to a fully coded prototype," Field said. A product manager, Holly Li, came up for a demo. At a laptop, she copied the design for a music player in the Figma editor and pasted it into a chat box, typing instructions to rotate the album art like a record while a song is playing. She showed apps created with Figma Make, eliciting some cheers, and returned to the demo. "Okay. This time, the model had a little bit of difficulty, but that's okay," she said. The cloudy background image from the original design was gone, and track names became difficult to read. The crowd was silent. She brought up a working version in a different browser tab. The feature went live last week. Mehrotra said it's off to a good start. Other products in the market were built with generative AI in mind. They include Lovable, Miro's Uizard and Vercel's v0. Brent Stewart, an analyst at Gartner, said that Figma is "utterly, utterly dominant" in design but that some of the offerings from other companies look more impressive. Andrew Chan, a former Figma software engineer, wrote in a blog post last year that "an interesting and ongoing question is whether Figma can repeat the success it had in design with other products." Nadia Eldeib, a former Lyft product manager and CEO of startup CodeYam, tried Figma Make before the broad launch and put it up against Lovable and v0. Writing on Substack, she said it appeared to be at an earlier stage. It's the sort of feedback that Field will read and send to his employees, known as Figmates. He reads support tickets and mentions of Figma's name on X, formerly Twitter. He took no time off to address such matters on the very day that his company was conducting its IPO, ultimately pricing shares $1 above the expected range. Yianni Mathioudakis, a creative director in Maryland, tagged Figma in a post on Wednesday, asking if anyone had found a way to take a Figma Make design and bring it into the main design editor. "Hi Yianni, we are working towards this and very excited about what it will unlock!" Field replied. "Please keep the Make feedback coming!"
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Will Your House Drop in Value This Year? Zillow Thinks So — 6 Things To Do Now
Zillow released its July housing market report on July 21, projecting that average home prices will decline by 2% by the end of 2025. Read More: Find Out: New listings have outpaced home sales, which has raised inventory for sale by 17% year-over-year. MarketWatch reported that the imbalance of supply and demand has forced homebuilders to cut prices of new homes below the average prices for existing homes by an impressive $33,500. So, how should buyers and sellers navigate this rapidly shifting real estate market? Buyers: Don't Wait for the 'Perfect' Market Never try to time the market. 'Don't sit on the sidelines too long waiting for the 'perfect' drop — timing the market is nearly impossible,' said Danielle Andrews, realtor at Realty ONE Group. 'Instead, get pre-approved now, choose your Realtor, and be ready to move quickly when the right home at the right value appears.' That said, don't rush into buying if you're not ready. While much of the country has entered a buyer's market, it could get even more buyer-friendly if interest rates drop, just as many competing buyers pause their home search during the holidays. Discover Next: Buyers: Play Hardball With far more sellers than buyers, now is a great time to feel out sellers to find the most motivated ones. Some desperate sellers may accept drastic price cuts to make a quick sale. Real estate investor Charissa Bright of Bright Buys Houses urges buyers to lean into this market. 'More homes on the market means stronger negotiating power, with some sellers offering incentives like rate buydowns, closing-cost help, and price flexibility. My advice is get pre-approved, know your budget, and be ready to pounce when the right house pops up.' Buyers: Keep an Eye on Mortgage Rates You and every other buyer want mortgage rates to fall. But if and when they do, it could drive up home prices again. After all, most buyers finance their homes, so they make offers based on their projected monthly payment. Lower interest rates mean buyers can afford to spend more — so they offer more. Sellers: Adjust Expectations Your home may have been worth more six months ago than it is worth today. If you plan to sell, you need to accept and adapt to the new market conditions. 'Overpricing in a softening market leads to longer days on market and price cuts,' said Yancy Forsythe of Missouri Valley Homes. 'It's better to list slightly under current market value and attract serious buyers than to chase the market down.' Sellers: Hold Unless You Have a Great Reason To Sell If you must sell for financial or practical reasons, then you don't have much choice. Alternatively, you might see a buying opportunity that's so amazing that you just can't pass on it. But barring a compelling reason to move, sit tight in your current home. 'Don't panic,' said Andrews. 'Real estate is a long game, so keep maintaining your property and remember that values rebound over time.' Sellers: Make Strategic Upgrades (at Any Price Point) You don't need to spend a fortune on home improvements to sell your house. You do need to think critically about marketing. Speak with a real estate agent about curb appeal improvements, even if they're as simple as trimming trees or bushes, mulching flower beds, or spending a weekend repainting. Sabine Ghali, managing director at Buttonwood Property Management, just worked with a client to sell in a cool market. 'Instead of caving and just cutting the price, we got smart and focused on a few small upgrades we knew would pay off. We swapped out some outdated light fixtures and staged the extra bedroom as a home office. That little bit of work made a huge difference, and the house sold close to asking while similar listings took longer,' said Ghali. More From GOBankingRates How Much Money Is Needed To Be Considered Middle Class in Your State? This article originally appeared on Will Your House Drop in Value This Year? Zillow Thinks So — 6 Things To Do Now Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Mortgage and refinance interest rates today, August 3, 2025: Rates stay high
Mortgage rates are moving in different directions this weekend. According to Zillow, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate shifted up by two basis points to 6.60%. Meanwhile, the 15-year fixed rate is down 11 basis points to 5.76%. While rates have been fluctuating up and down recently, there's still been a clear increase compared to 2024. According to Zillow, 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgage rates have both gone up over 40 basis points. In July 2024, the 30-year rate was 6.12%, and the 15-year rate was 5.35%. Even so, if you are looking to buy a house, it could benefit you to lock in a mortgage now, as rates are not expected to plummet in the near future. Dig deeper: 2025 housing market — Is it a good time to buy a house? Current mortgage rates Here are the current mortgage rates, according to the latest Zillow data: 30-year fixed: 6.60% 20-year fixed: 6.36% 15-year fixed: 5.76% 5/1 ARM: 6.91% 7/1 ARM: 7.12% 30-year VA: 6.22% 15-year VA: 5.58% 5/1 VA: 5.94% Remember, these are the national averages and rounded to the nearest hundredth. Learn more: 8 strategies for getting the lowest mortgage rates Current mortgage refinance rates These are today's mortgage refinance rates, according to the latest Zillow data: 30-year fixed: 6.66% 20-year fixed: 6.09% 15-year fixed: 5.39% 5/1 ARM: 7.32% 7/1 ARM: 6.75% 30-year VA: 6.03% 15-year VA: 5.67% 5/1 VA: 6.03% Again, the numbers provided are national averages rounded to the nearest hundredth. Mortgage refinance rates are often higher than rates when you buy a house, although that's not always the case. Read more: Is now a good time to refinance your mortgage? Refinance interest rates Up Next Up Next Monthly mortgage payment calculator Use the mortgage calculator below to see how various mortgage terms and interest rates will impact your monthly payments. Our free mortgage calculator also considers factors like property taxes and homeowners insurance when determining your estimated monthly mortgage payment. This gives you a more realistic idea of your total monthly payment than if you just looked at mortgage principal and interest. 30-year vs. 15-year fixed mortgage rates The average 30-year mortgage rate today is 6.60%. A 30-year term is the most popular type of mortgage because by spreading out your payments over 360 months, your monthly payment is lower than with a shorter-term loan. The average 15-year mortgage rate is 5.76% today. When deciding between a 15-year and a 30-year mortgage, consider your short-term versus long-term goals. A 15-year mortgage comes with a lower interest rate than a 30-year term. This is great in the long run because you'll pay off your loan 15 years sooner, and that's 15 fewer years for interest to accumulate. But the trade-off is that your monthly payment will be higher as you pay off the same amount in half the time. Let's say you get a $300,000 mortgage. With a 30-year term and a 6.60% rate, your monthly payment toward the principal and interest would be about $1,916, and you'd pay $389,752 in interest over the life of your loan — on top of that original $300,000. If you get that same $300,000 mortgage with a 15-year term and a 5.76% rate, your monthly payment would jump to $2,493. But you'd only pay $148,711 in interest over the years. Fixed-rate vs. adjustable-rate mortgages With a fixed-rate mortgage, your rate is locked in for the entire life of your loan. You will get a new rate if you refinance your mortgage, though. An adjustable-rate mortgage keeps your rate the same for a predetermined period of time. Then, the rate will go up or down depending on several factors, such as the economy and the maximum amount your rate can change according to your contract. For example, with a 7/1 ARM, your rate would be locked in for the first seven years, then change every year for the remaining 23 years of your term. Adjustable rates typically start lower than fixed rates, but once the initial rate-lock period ends, it's possible your rate will go up. Lately, though, some fixed rates have been starting lower than adjustable rates. Talk to your lender about its rates before choosing one or the other. Dig deeper: Fixed-rate vs. adjustable-rate mortgages How to get a low mortgage rate Mortgage lenders typically give the lowest mortgage rates to people with higher down payments, great or excellent credit scores, and low debt-to-income ratios. So, if you want a lower rate, try saving more, improving your credit score, or paying down some debt before you start shopping for homes. Waiting for rates to drop probably isn't the best method to get the lowest mortgage rate right now. If you're ready to buy, focusing on your personal finances is probably the best way to lower your rate. How to choose a mortgage lender To find the best mortgage lender for your situation, apply for mortgage preapproval with three or four companies. Just be sure to apply to all of them within a short time frame — doing so will give you the most accurate comparisons and have less of an impact on your credit score. When choosing a lender, don't just compare interest rates. Look at the mortgage annual percentage rate (APR) — this factors in the interest rate, any discount points, and fees. The APR, which is also expressed as a percentage, reflects the true annual cost of borrowing money. This is probably the most important number to look at when comparing mortgage lenders. Learn more: Best mortgage lenders for first-time home buyers Current mortgage rates: FAQs What is a mortgage interest rate at right now? According to Zillow, the national average 30-year mortgage rate for purchasing a home is 6.60%, and the average 15-year mortgage rate is 5.76%. But these are national averages, so the average in your area could be different. Averages are typically higher in expensive parts of the U.S. and lower in less expensive areas. What's a good mortgage rate right now? The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.60% right now, according to Zillow. However, you might get an even better rate with an excellent credit score, sizable down payment, and low debt-to-income ratio (DTI). Are mortgage rates expected to drop? Mortgage rates aren't expected to drop drastically in the near future, though they may inch down now and then.
