The Tale of a House, and an Entire Market | North Salem NY Homes
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If you’re going to refinance, first do this: Spruce up your house | North Salem Real Estate
For anyone selling a home, sprucing up is a no-brainer. Repairs, upgrades, painting and landscaping can raise the sales price. But homeowners who are staying put and refinancing often don’t bother with these improvements. If you’re not looking for a buyer and have years to get around to these things, why bother?
Because the home’s condition will be reflected in the lender’s appraisal, which will determine whether you get the new mortgage and how large it can be.
Appraisals start with an analysis of comparable sales data — the prices of nearby homes that have sold recently. Homes that have merely been refinanced are not included. Because most home sellers do spruce up, the comparable prices likely reflect homes in good to excellent condition.
In the second step, the appraiser makes adjustments for differences between the home and what he or she believes to be the standard among the comparables. So if you have a kitchen from the ’70s and the recently sold homes were more up to date, your appraised value will suffer.
After all, the point of the appraisal is to make sure the home is valuable enough to serve as collateral on the loan. The homeowner may perceive the “value” as including all those nagging improvement plans as if they’d be done, as they surely would be before a sale. But the lender wants to know what the home would fetch as is, in case it had to be unloaded after a foreclosure. A homeowner with enough financial troubles to land in foreclosure is unlikely to spend big money on repairs and improvements.
Douglas Elliman lists 87-Acre Ridgefield Equestrian Facility For $55 Million | North Salem Real Estate
Double H Farm, a 87-acre Olympic equestrian training facility and family home in Ridgefield, has hit the market for $55 million.
Canada’s top-earning CEO, Hunter Harrison, who heads Canadian Pacific Railroad, owns the property. He purchased the dairy farm in 2005 and transformed it into one of the country’s leading equestrian facilities. The property is listed with Sally Slater of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
Double H Farm farm extends over 97 acres of rolling hills and vast fenced grass paddocks with never-ending views and dramatic sunsets. It has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and 14,250 square feet of living space.
The circa-1765 property is rich in history. Formerly known as the McKeon Farm, it was the oldest working dairy farm in Ridgefield. Conservation property is adjacent to the farm.
Since 2005 the farm has undergone a series of renovations to turn it into a world-class Olympic-level equestrian facility and dream estate.
The house was built in 2009. Framed with vintage, reconditioned barn beams from Vermont, the entire house incorporates green technology, geothermal heating and air conditioning systems and radiant heat in the floors. An elevator goes to all levels of the home.
The living room has 38-foot ceilings, a massive limestone and fieldstone gas fireplace highlighted by a scaffolding of barn beams and a wall of glass overlooking the property. The formal dining room has cove lighting and a gas fireplace. The eat-in gourmet kitchen and family room has an informal dining area, top-of-the-line appliances and a massive center island. The fully outfitted outdoor kitchen is built into the screened porch off the kitchen. There is also an office with a gas fireplace.
The first floor houses the luxurious master bedroom with 20-foot domed ceilings, Venetian plaster walls, a limestone fireplace, a large marble bath with two showers, a hot tubs boise (Jacuzzi), a gas fireplace and his and hers closets in addition to a safe room.
The lower level features a state-of-the-art media room with a gas fireplace and a 105-inch plasma television, wine cellar, sauna, golf room with a putting green and golf simulator and a massage room/gym with a bath and steam shower.
The seven-car garage includes mahogany decks with two stone fire pits, a Jacuzzi spa with a waterfall, a Koi pond, an audio-visual room and a “home networking’ system to work every system in the house.
An additional four-bedroom home and the totally renovated historical home, dating from 1765, grace the property sharing views past the pool and tennis court of a bucolic pond and paddocks. Surrounding conservation land protects this special property for posterity.
Double H Farm features two barns with more than 40 stalls. The main barn has 20 spacious and airy stalls, four grooming and wash stalls in addition to laundry, tack and feed rooms. There are three staff apartments with living rooms and kitchens. The second barn, built for the breeding operation, has 14 stalls and two grooming and wash stalls.
For complete information on the property, view the listing website.
http://greenwich.dailyvoice.com/real-estate/87-acre-equestrian-facility-hits-market-55-million
Should You Rent or Sell Your Home? | North Salem Real Estate
Ryan Severino liked the location of his family’s home in Scotch Plains, N.J., but he also thought they needed more space. So in the summer of 2011, they decided to buy a bigger house. Mortgage interest rates were down, and so were home prices. “We were outgrowing our house,” Severino says. “We didn’t want to wait for prices to go back up.”
But one thing he didn’t realize was exactly how long it would take to sell the first house or to rent it, if that turned out to be the better option. “It comes down to more than pure economics,” says Severino, senior economist and associate director of research at Reis, Inc., a real estate research firm.
Finally, in the spring of 2012, eight or nine months later, Severino found a buyer for the first house. In the interim, Severino weighed the pros and cons of renting versus selling, and he reflected on the decision he ultimately made. “It was tough to sell it in that market,” Severino says. “We had the house on the market for sale while we were getting inquiries for renting it.” But Severino knew he didn’t want to be a landlord, and “didn’t want the money tied up in the house.”
Determining whether a property is a good investment takes research and analysis, and it’s wise to take your time in making the decision because it’s a major one, real estate experts say.
Princess Firyal’s Pierre duplex hits the market for $70M | North Salem NY Homes
A sprawling Upper East Side home believed to belong to HRH Princess Firyal of Jordan is once again on the market — this time, with an asking price of $70 million.
The duplex apartment, which spans the 30th and 31st floors of the Pierre at 795 Fifth Avenue, was owned by the late financier Lionel Pincus and later handed over to the Jordanian princess, Pincus’ longtime companion. The luxurious 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home boasts 360-degree views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, a 42-foot library along Fifth Avenue and two master bedroom suites with custom wood-paneled dressing rooms and marble baths, according to the listing. Sotheby’s International Realty broker Serena Boardman has the listing.
Boardman declined to comment for this story, and a spokesperson for Sotheby’s declined to confirm the seller’s identity. Calls and emails to Firyal’s publicist were not immediately returned.
Pincus, who co-founded private equity firm Warburg Pincus, was incapacitated in 2003. His sons listed the apartment in 2007 for $50 million, claiming the upkeep was too expensive. They listed it again In March 2008 for $35 million.
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/01/27/princess-firyals-pierre-duplex-hits-the-market-for-70m/
Get a Jump on a Cool-Season Vegetable Garden | North Salem Real Estate
Gundlach: Housing Market Softer Than People Think | North Salem Real Estate
For Jeffrey Gundlach, the U.S. housing recovery isn’t so rosy.
The founder of $49 billion investment firm DoubleLine Capital LP is largely avoiding the subprime-mortgage bonds that jumped about 17 percent last year after home prices surged by the most since 2006, deterred by the lengthy process to sell foreclosed houses and the destruction that’s creating.
“These properties are rotting away,” Gundlach, 54, said last week on a conference call with investors, about homes stuck in foreclosure pipelines, adding that it could take six years to resolve defaulted loans made to the least creditworthy borrowers before the real-estate crash.
DoubleLine is giving up potentially higher yields that last year attracted money managers including Western Asset Management Co. along with hedge funds as 21 percent of foreclosed homes across the U.S. are in limbo, vacated by former owners and not yet seized by lenders, according to data company RealtyTrac.
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/gundlach–housing-market-softer-than-people-think-16722.html