Aaron Crowe

Internet real estate listings are full of photos of homes for sale, allowing buyers to spend hours looking at pictures. With such a large selection, you'd think that real estate agents would think twice before allowing poorly photographed homes to appear in their listings. But still, there are plenty of ugly listing photos out there.

A home described as a "charming opportunity" doesn't look so charming, lawns need to be mowed, and cameras need to be focused. A website in Seattle keeps track of such detrimental listings, and the photos should be enough to turn a potential buyer away. Even multimillion-dollar homes aren't immune.

But good photos can help a home sell fast, San Francisco photographer Herman Bustamante told HousingWatch. He photographs real estate and has seen $1 million homes sell within a week with professionally taken photos in the listing.

Too many real estate agents will take listing photos themselves to try to save some money, but it will cost them in the long run, Bustamante says.

California has the hottest markets for selling homes over the original asking price while Florida has the most places where homes sell for less, according to a new report.

The quarterly report from ZipRealty looks at ZIP codes across the U.S. to see where homes are selling the most above and below asking price. Seven of the top 10 ZIP codes are in California, and seven of the bottom 10 in the country are in Florida.

Home sales hit a three-month low in June across the country, but in Berkeley, ZipRealty agent Wayne Cory said he hasn't seen sales as good since he started in the business six years ago. Berkeley homes in the 94703 ZIP code led the country and sold for almost 108 percent of the asking price, or an additional $45,000 over list, on average.

"We're still experiencing over-asking prices for nice, clean homes," Cory said.

About 650 homes for sale in Maine are priced at $1 million or more, and with the recession making it twice as hard to sell such homes, real estate agents in Maine are resorting to a lot more inventive marketing techniques.

High-end homes have to be promoted onto the market like a new products, Tom Landry, a Realtor in Portland, told the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

Indirect marketing done by offering such properties for private events or photo shoots to raise their profiles is becoming more common in Maine.

"When we first launched this property we contacted some of the local magazines to offer the property up as a destination photoshoot area for them, if they had celebrities in town, etcetera," Landry said. "We were actually taken up on that by Portland magazine, and they used the roof on their cover shot, and they overlaid one of their celebrities onto that cover shot."

A 55,000-square-foot mansion set for auction next month would easily fetch the $9.9 million previous asking price if it were in Carmel, Calif., instead of Carmel, Ind.

But there it sits in Indiana, a 36-room home called Le Chateau Renaissance, built by Conseco insurance company founder Stephen Hilbert and his wife, Tomisue Hilbert, for $35 million. It took five years to build and was completed in 1994, but the couple lost ownership when Stephen Hilbert didn't repay money he borrowed from his company, which has since been renamed CNO Financial Group.

Hilbert told his hometown newspaper that he may bid on the home, which has a mural on the entryway's domed ceiling that includes his likeness as a Greek god.

"Until they paint it over, I'll have the pleasure of looking down and watching what they do with the place," Hilbert told the paper.

Comedian and podcast king Adam Carolla is selling his first home -- a French Normandy-style home above Hollywood that he says was structurally "a dump" when he bought it. But Carolla says that the improvements he's made make it worth the $1.3 million asking price for a bachelor; a young, gay or straight couple; or basically anyone without kids.

"You could throw a party in the basement and make as much noise as you wanted and the neighbors would never care," Carolla told HousingWatch in a telephone interview.

The home was dilapidated when he bought it, and as a lifelong contractor, he put sweat equity and at least $350,000 in improvements into the house, he says. He made the home earthquake proof, replaced the electrical and plumbing, and put on a $75,000 slate roof.

"I overbuilt it, really, and just overdid it," Carolla says of the work he did on the house.

So is the bachelor pad worth what he's asking?

The Tampa Bay Rays have been having a tough time the last two weeks, having won only 3 of their last 10 games. But many consider the team currently in third-place to have its best roster since it clinched the AL East title in 2008. All the more reason to live near the action.

It's not a quick walk -- probably an hour -- but this luxury home for sale on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, Fla., is less than a 10-minute drive from Tropicana Field, home of the Rays and a summer full of exciting baseball.

But you might want to move soon. The Rays' owner announced June 21 that he wants to move the team after the team's contract runs out in 2027. That gives you 17 years -- or possibly fewer, if a new home is found sooner -- to enjoy a new home near downtown St. Petersburg before the Rays move.

But there may be some good news soon, too.

For $2.4 million, you could live within five blocks of Wrigley Field and be near one of the greatest baseball parks in the country. You might not have any money left over for Chicago Cubs tickets, which are the most expensive in Major League Baseball. But if you do get tickets, at least you'll be saving money by being able to walk to the stadium and not having to pay for gas, parking or public transportation.

Here are two homes for sale at $2.4 million each to put you within walking distance of Cubs games. If the price is too steep, then at least go visit Wrigley Field and enjoy the ivy-covered outfield walls. You might want to grow some ivy outside on the walls of these homes, too:

Fraud, or at least charges of fraud, just keep on coming in the mortgage and real estate world, leaving homebuyers wondering where the oversight is. The criminal courts are getting busier, hearing cases against the employees and executives of the same companies that are supposed to be helping homebuyers.

Why is there now so much corruption in the mortgage industry? It's an issue that Congress is looking into. The federal government currently is expanding its oversight of the banking system and financial markets, the entities that helped cause the recession.

Here are three of the more prominent recent examples:

There are fewer than a dozen homes for sale within walking distance of Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., but if you want to buy a home with the quickest walk to the baseball stadium, you're going to have to come up with $649,000 or more for a condo in the Capitol Quarter.

Public transportation to the ballpark is popular, so if you find another home to buy nearby, getting to the stadium shouldn't be difficult. But for my money, I'll take the two bedroom, two-and-a-half bath condo at 1020 4th St., SE, with 1,535 square feet -- more than many single-family homes -- that's selling for $651,500, and enjoy the approximately six-block walk to hopefully see rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg pitch.

The only difficulty, however, is that the condo isn't built yet. Interested buyers should contact the builder, who has priced the condos from $649,000 to $829,000. You might not get in to see Strasburg this year, but hopefully by opening day next year, you'll be in and can see the stadium lights at night.

It's no mystery why suspense author James Patterson is moving to another oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Fla. He recently sold his previous Palm Beach house for $10.3 million -- perhaps another sign that the real estate market is moving again as another celebrity sells his home.

Patterson, whose latest novel is "Swimsuit" and who also wrote "Along Came a Spider" along with 18 other consecutive No.1 New York Times bestsellers, bought the Everglades Island home at 686 Island Drive for $5.2 million in 1999. That makes its selling price almost double what he paid.

Was it worth all that scratch?

At least rapper Chamillionaire isn't changing his name to Cha-"thousand"-aire. The Houston native is getting out of a mortgage for a $2 million home there by not making payments on the mansion and letting it go into foreclosure. The trend of walking away from a mortgage in the down market is hitting even millionaire musicians.

His song "Houston Got a Problem" takes on new meaning.

His decision to go into foreclosure on the 7,583-square-foot mansion that he bought in 2006 was a business decision and not because of "financial negligence or anything like that," he told TMZ, despite carrying multiple mortgages for himself and others.

The housing market in California's Silicon Valley is beginning to rebound. And while it certainly isn't as hot and heavy as it was in the dot-com boom with multiple offers as high as the sky, local real estate agents say competition is starting again among homebuyers, especially on the lower end of the market.

HousingWatch has a hunch that house-hunting tips that apply to California's Silicon Valley, one of the most rollicking, high-stakes housing markets in the country, should work in other, slowly awakening real estate markets. With that in mind, we spoke with a few Silicon Valley real estate professionals to get some ideas of what is important to keep in mind when getting ready to buy your next home:

The housing market is bouncing back in San Francisco, where sales of houses and condominiums jumped 50 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. Improving technology stocks and a limited housing supply are credited with the increase.

And not just more homes were sold, but at higher prices, with the median price rising 5.4 percent to $685,000. The city and the metro area have ranked first or second among the most expensive U.S. housing markets for 19 of the past 20 years, as homebuyers flock there for its weather and high quality of life.

But how much home can the median price of $685,000 buy in San Francisco? For about $680,000 there are plenty of foreclosures to choose from, many near the border of Daly City. Most are near the edges of the city, but a few are near its center. Here are three San Francisco homes for sale in different parts of the city that are worth taking a look at, and are all in good neighborhoods:

With the average home in the desirable Dallas, Texas, suburb of University Park selling for more than $1 million, finding a deal can be difficult.

This house at 4508 Stanhope St. in University Park is only $1 under $1 million -- listed at $999,999 -- but it's still a worthy home to buy with plenty of room in a great neighborhood.

I've written before about University Park, a city with 23,324 residents that has a small-town feel while being close to Dallas and its big-city attractions. The area is also home to Southern Methodist University.

If Sarah Palin wants a place in Manhattan to call home and get away from it all, Tina Fey's condo could provide some respite for $2,295,000. But I suppose that would be awkward. Fey and her husband recently put the condo on the market, a year after moving out for bigger digs nearby at another condo on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

There might be some history within the walls of the condo at 500 West End Ave., #2C, where Fey might have worked on her imitation of Palin for "Saturday Night Live" sketches.

Or maybe not. The walls don't talk, and only Fey knows for sure. But either way, it's a place where the former vice presidential candidate can kick off her shoes and relax while contemplating her next political move and how Fey will likely make fun of it. After all, it was that kind of comedy that helped Fey buy the condo for $1.9 million in 2005.