Category Archives: North Salem

Las Vegas home prices continue steady rise, surprising experts | North Salem Homes

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Despite an expected slowdown, Las Vegas housing prices keep going up.

The median price of a previously owned single-family home sold in Southern Nevada last month was $180,000, up 35 percent from $133,000 a year earlier, according to a new report from the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Sales prices have now climbed 17 of the past 18 months after bottoming out in January 2012, at $118,000. According to research firm CoreLogic, Nevada home prices are the fastest-rising in the country.

“We keep expecting these price increases to slow down at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet,” GLVAR President Dave Tina said.

He’s not the only one to predict that Las Vegas’ housing market will cool off. Home values are expected to grow 9 percent by June 2014 after soaring 29 percent over the past year, the second-fastest rate among major metro areas, according to Zillow.

The surge has been fueled in large part by cash investors who buy cheap houses in bulk to turn into rentals, crimping the inventory of homes for sale. Availability also has been limited by homeowners who refuse to sell or can’t sell because they’re underwater or stuck in foreclosure processing delays.

Analysts say the valley is not mired in another housing bubble, as prices and values simply are rising from historic lows. Some experts, however, say the valley could be on the cusp of another false housing boom.

Yale University economist Robert Shiller, co-founder of the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, said in late June that Las Vegas is one of several cities at risk of a bubble

 

 

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http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2013/aug/08/nevada-home-prices-continue-steady-rise-surprising/

 

Bedford NY area sales highlights | Chappaqua sales up 80% – Bedford up 17% | RobReportBlog

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Sales
Armonkup 7%
Chappaquaup 80%
Pound Ridgedown 25%
Bedford Cornerseven
Bedford Villageup 17%
Bedford Hillsup 9%
South Salemup 7%
Katonahup 2%
North Salemup 11%
Mt Kiscodown 12%

Closing Costs Keep Pace with Prices | North Salem Real Estate

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Cash-strapped home buyers struggling with soaring home prices have an unpleasant surprise awaiting them at the closing table. Closing costs are rising nearly as quickly as home prices.

On average, mortgage closing costs rose 6 percent over 2012 to $2,402, according to Bankrate.com. Origination fees accounted for the bulk of the increase, rising 8 percent, while third-party fees for services like title and appraisals edged up 1 percent to $672.

Hawaii’s average closing costs of $2,919 are the highest in the nation. Alaska ($2,675), South Carolina ($2,658), California ($2,639) and New Mexico ($2,566) join the Aloha State in the top five.

Wisconsin ($2,119), Missouri ($2,188), Kansas ($2,193), Michigan ($2,203) and Washington State ($2,208) comprise the bottom five.

“It’s unlikely that you will move to Wisconsin solely to pay lower closing costs, but you should shop around and compare fees from different loan originators to make sure you get the best deal in your area,” said Polyana da Costa, senior mortgage analyst, Bankrate.com.

Closing costs
2013
rank

2012 rank†

State

Lender’s
origination fees

Third-party
fees

Origination plus
third-party fees

12Hawaii$1,970$949$2,919
24Alaska$1,925$750$2,675
36South Carolina$1,935$723$2,658
435California$1,977$662$2,639
543New Mexico$1,807$760$2,566
68North Carolina$1,840$718$2,558
718New Jersey$1,804$741$2,545
834Oklahoma$1,919$600$2,519
920Florida$1,798$719$2,517
107Delaware$1,742$760$2,502
1127Ohio$1,803$693$2,496
1211Georgia$1,816$674$2,490
133Texas$1,690$778$2,468
14*26Pennsylvania$1,920$540$2,460
14*13North Dakota$1,797$663$2,460
1624District of Columbia$1,826$623$2,449
1722Montana$1,767$680$2,446
1819Louisiana$1,782$662$2,443
1933Maryland$1,816$624$2,441
2031Tennessee$1,806$631$2,437
2121Connecticut$1,757$680$2,436
2236Maine$1,761$647$2,408
2349Idaho$1,767$641$2,407
2438Iowa$1,757$647$2,403
2541Arkansas$1,782$614$2,396
2628Indiana$1,732$656$2,387
2748Colorado$1,758$625$2,383
2817Kentucky$1,732$649$2,381
2937Arizona$1,752$621$2,372
3046Oregon$1,707$663$2,370
3123Virginia$1,718$650$2,369
3244South Dakota$1,732$617$2,349
3339Alabama$1,721$627$2,348
3415Rhode Island$1,686$660$2,347
3551Nevada$1,642$704$2,346
3610Nebraska$1,656$689$2,345
371New York$1,504$827$2,331
3840Mississippi$1,682$639$2,320
3945Utah$1,663$653$2,316
4050Wyoming$1,678$623$2,301
4114Massachusetts$1,601$699$2,300
4216West Virginia$1,578$705$2,283
4329Minnesota$1,641$612$2,253
4412New Hampshire$1,576$676$2,252
4542Vermont$1,578$667$2,245
469Illinois$1,591$647$2,238
4747Washington$1,603$605$2,208
4832Michigan$1,591$611$2,203
4930Kansas$1,558$635$2,193
5025Missouri$1,542$646$2,188
515Wisconsin$1,438$682$2,119
Average$1,730$672$2,402

*Denotes a tie

 

 

Closing Costs Keep Pace with Prices | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.

North Salem sales up 11% – Median price up 14% | RobReportBlog

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North   Salem NY Real Estate ReportRobReportBlog
20136 months ending 8/72012
29Sales26
$548,000.00median sold price$477,500.00
$200,000.00low sold price$215,000.00
$8,900,000.00high sold price$2,600,000.00
2946average size2667
$258.00ave. price per foot$239.00
206ave days on market226
$889,137.00average sold price$656,150.00
95.31%ave sold to ask93.09%

Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn Relists Brentwood Home | North Salem Real Estate

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You may know him as the cool headphones-wearing Mr. Hahn or as that guy behind the turntable at a Linkin Park concert. Either way, Joe Hahn has left his mark on the rock music scene.

He’s also trying to leave his Brentwood home. After listing the modern 6,458-square-foot house for $5.5 million in January, he dropped the price to $4.9 million before temporarily taking it off the market. Now relisted for $4.6 million, the home is still 143.7 percent more expensive than the median Brentwood home.

The high price tag isn’t surprising, though. Located in an exclusive Brentwood Hills gated community at 1076 Carrara Pl, Los Angeles, CA 90049, the 5-bedroom, 6-bath property is designed around floor-to-ceiling windows with ocean, city and canyon views. The home is also equipped with solar panels, an on-site compost center and sleek finishes inside and out.

Hahn grew up in Glendale before joining Linkin Park as the band’s DJ and programmer. He became the first Korean-American to receive a Grammy when the band won the award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002.

He purchased the home under a trust for $3.9 million in 2006, according to property records. The for-sale listing is held by Rodeo Realty’s Ben Salem.

 

 

Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn Relists Brentwood Home | Zillow Blog.

Owning vs. Renting a Home | North Salem Homes

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To the Editor:

Re “Owning a Home Isn’t Always a Virtue” (Economic View, July 14), which questioned incentives for homeownership:

Owning a home is one of the best ways to build financial security over the long term, providing equity accumulation and tax benefits. Homeownership strengthens communities, supports the economy and helps families build wealth — and for many people, it means gaining a foothold into the middle class. That is why owning a home has had longstanding government support.

Admittedly, lax lending and risky mortgages led to the housing market crash, but Americans have justly called for a return to safe, sensible underwriting standards. But the people have also spoken clearly and consistently about the importance of policies that promote responsible, sustainable homeownership, like the mortgage interest deduction.

Further, comparing homeownership rates in the United States to those in Switzerland, as the column did, is comparing apples to oranges; there are too many variables that influence those rates to make a fair comparison.

LAWRENCE YUN

Washington, July 16

The writer is chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.

 

 

Owning vs. Renting a Home – NYTimes.com.

What Words Should Real-Estate Listings Use? Depends on the Market | North Salem Real Estate

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A strong market means homes with more sun and more views—that is, if you are going by real-estate listings.

During strong market cycles, agents tend to reference lifestyle features, including sunshine, entertainment and views, more frequently in their listings than during slow periods, says Kirsten Robertson, senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, who researched language in residential property listings.

About 55% of the listings she studied mentioned sunshine and 42% referenced views during a buoyant market, compared with 41% that referenced sunshine and 26% that referenced views during a slow market.

[image]James Gulliver Hancock

Because a home’s exposure to the sun and its views aren’t things that change, the listings demonstrate that agents are homing in on different elements depending on market strength, Prof. Robertson says. That, in turn, may affect how people see the housing market as a whole. “All the language they use will influence how people will feel about a property,” she says.

Prof. Robertson and co-author Antony Doig of the University of Otago, working with experts in linguistics, examined 965 residential listings from 2001 to 2008 in Dunedin, New Zealand. They categorized the years 2002 through 2007 as buoyant market cycles, and 2001 and 2008 as slow market cycles. They then coded the listings for 13 variables, including references to emotive language, good value and sunshine; adjectives such as “bright” and “capacious” and adverbs such as “effortlessly” and “generously.” The study, “An Empirical Investigation of Variations in Real-Estate Marketing Language over a Market Cycle,” was published in Housing, Theory and Society in June 2010.

In a buoyant market, listings also were more attention-grabbing—using so-called intensifying words such as “totally,” “ultra” and “absolutely”—and more frequently referred to “you.”

Enlarge Image

image

Bloomberg

In a buoyant market, listings were more attention-grabbing—using so-called intensifying words such as ‘totally,’ ‘ultra’ and ‘absolutely.’

During a slower market, listings included references to “cheap” and “value” and included more emotive language to entice people to buy.

Agents also stressed that the market was a “buyers’ market” in slow periods—using terms such as “desperate” and “has to go”—to coerce people to buy, Prof. Robertson adds. Agents referenced “sellers’ market” during strong cycles, with phrases such as “not going to last” and “will sell,” to draw more people to a listing. “The more competition they got, the higher the final offer will be,” she says.

 

 

What Words Should Real-Estate Listings Use? Depends on the Market – WSJ.com.

New home sales hit five-year high, prices soar | North Salem Homes

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New U.S. home sales vaulted to a five-year high in June, while other data on Wednesday showed an acceleration in factory activity in July, boosting hopes of a third-quarter pick-up in economic growth.

 

Showing no signs yet of slowing in the face of higher mortgage rates, single-family home sales increased 8.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 497,000 units, the highest level since May 2008, the Commerce Department said.

 

Economists, who had expected sales to advance only to a 482,000-unit rate, said buyers sitting on the fence had probably rushed into the market to lock in lower rates in anticipation of mortgage rates moving even higher.

 

“The recent increase in mortgage rates hasn’t slowed demand as long as home affordability remains high,” said Bob Walters, chief economist at Quicken Loans in Detroit. “We are, however, seeing an increased urgency from potential new home buyers as they move to secure today’s historically low rates.”

 

Though the government revised down sales from March through May by a total 38,000 units, the overall tone of the report was bullish. Compared with June last year, single-family home sales were up 38.1 percent, the largest increase since January 1992.

 

There had been worries that higher borrowing costs could crimp the housing market recovery after a report on Monday showed a surprise drop in home resales in June.

 

Mortgage rates have been rising in anticipation of the Federal Reserve starting to reduce its massive monetary stimulus later this year. According to Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate increased 0.53 percentage point in June to 4.07 percent, its highest level since October 2011.

 

Still, mortgage rates, which edged lower last week, remain low by historical standards and economists, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, believe the fundamentals in the housing market are strong enough to withstand the rise in borrowing costs.

 

New home sales hit five-year high, prices soar | Reuters.

10 weird renewable energy sources | North Salem Real Estate

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'The Flintstones' foot-powered car (© Moviestore Collection/Rex Features)
Putting the ‘new’ in renewable

From Fred Flintstone’s foot-powered car to the Starship Enterprise’s dilithium crystals, Americans have a rich history of imagining alternative fuel sources for petroleum-free worlds.

But what may have seemed like science fiction just two decades ago — think dance floors that produce energy and cars that run on chocolate — is quickly becoming reality.

To be sure, not all of these technologies will make it out of the laboratory, and many are decades away from achieving mainstream adoption. Yet with growing concern about climate change and rising costs at the gas pump, more consumers are opting to think outside the box when it comes to powering their homes and cars.

“You can do lots of things in the lab, but the trick is turning it into a commercial scale that makes economic sense,” notes Greg Pahl, the author of “Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy” and other books about renewable energy. “With the more speculative ones, it may take 20 to 25 years to bring something like that to full commercialization.”

Among the newer alternative fuel sources that are showing potential? Biomass energy, which relies on previously living organisms to create fuel, and wave energy, Pahl notes.

While some renewable energy sources are growing mainstream — such as solar photovoltaic panels, which can be found in 300,000 homes across the U.S. — these weird energy sources are either just gaining a foothold or are in the experimental stage.

Read on to learn more about unusual energy sources that just might change the world.

 

Read more…

 

http://money.msn.com/investing/10-weird-renewable-energy-sources