Category Archives: North Salem

Trulia: Housing market inching closer to ‘normal’ | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate

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The housing market continued to trudge towards a recovery in March, with rising construction starts and falling foreclosure and delinquency rates bringing market conditions closer to those of a balanced one, according to Trulia’s Housing Barometer.

The barometer summarizes three key housing market indicators — construction starts, existing home sales, and the delinquency-plus-foreclosure rate — looking at how current conditions compare to those recorded at the depths of the housing crisis and those recorded before the housing bubble.

Trulia noted that while existing home sales dipped slightly from February to March, they were up 10 percent from a year ago. Residential construction posted a 47 percent annual gain in March, and the share of mortgages in delinquency or foreclosure fell to 9.96 percent, down a full percentage point from the same time last year.

As a result, Trulia’s Housing Barometer puts the housing market at 56 percent of the way back to normal in March, compared to 54 percent in February and 33 percent a year ago.

This month’s improvement is even better than it looks, said Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko, because of a shift of sales from distressed to conventional and early signs that the inventory crunch may be easing, which would bring some relief to would-be homebuyers.

via inman.com

Wall Street banks on distressed single-family homes | North Salem NY Real Estate

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Wall Street investors, hedge funds and other institutions are crowing out individuals home buyers because they are drawn by the prospect of double-figure profit margins on rents and the resale of homes whose prices plummeted in the crash. 

If the chain of easy credit and dangerous leverage that started on Wall Street fanned the housing bubble and eventual crash, some analysts find it disturbing that major investors are the ones snapping up the bargains — and eventual big profits — left in its wake.

“There is the possibility that Wall Street and the banks and the affluent 1% stand to gain the most from this,” said Jack McCabe, a real estate consultant. “Meanwhile, lower-income Americans will lose their opportunity for the American Dream of building wealth through owning a home.”

via housingwire.com

Big investors push up housing prices, make it tough for regular buyers | North Salem NY Homes

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., April 22 (UPI) — Investment firms are scooping up homes in distressed real estate markets, like Florida, blocking out individual bidders, experts say.

“There is the possibility that Wall Street and the banks and the affluent 1 percent stand to gain the most from this. Meanwhile, lower-income Americans will lose their opportunity for the American dream of building wealth through owning a home,” said Jack McCable a real estate consultant in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

The Washington Post reported Monday that some big investors are submitting bids for hundreds of homes a day, muscling in on about 70 percent of the market in certain areas.

“The investors are making it hard for a regular homeowner to buy a property. They are getting outbid by people with cash,” said broker Robert Russotto, at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate in Fort Lauderdale. Fla.

Russotto said he had 20 deals in the works and 17 of them were purchases by institutional investors.

One company, Title Capital, researches homes and assesses them for the size, the price and any special features they may have, does a quick legal check, searching for liens — and ends up with bids on 200 properties a day, the Post said.

RealtyTrac said one out of every 104 homes in Florida received a foreclosure filing in January through March of 2013.

That will put a lot of of them up for grabs at rock-bottom prices.

And more inventory is on the way. Close to half of Florida’s homes are considered underwater, which means that homeowners owe more on the mortgage than the value of the property. That situation prompted many homeowners to opt for foreclosure in recent years to avoid pouring money into a perceived sink-hole.

The conditions could be considered ironic. Banks that wrote risky subprime mortgages and investors that bought securities and derivatives set up the financial crisis that caused the housing market to go bust.

As a result, millions of jobs were lost and banks tightened restrictions on lending. So many people who were forced out of their homes are now blocked from returning to home ownership while cash-rich investors are buying the properties out from under them — and pushing prices higher.

When jobs return, the investors are expected to cash in on the increased home prices and get out of the rental market.

“If I had a way of buying a couple-hundred-thousand single-family homes, I would load up on them. It’s a very attractive asset class now. I could buy them at distressed prices and find renters,” said billionaire investor Warren Buffett in 2012.

Equity firm Blackstone Group came to the same conclusion. It now owns 20,000 rental homes worth $3 billion, said Peter Rose, a spokesman for the company.

Florida is not the only state where investment firms are driving up the price of properties.

Home prices in the past 12 months are up 23 percent in the Phoenix area and 15 percent around Las Vegas.

There is considerable worry that investment firms, banking on low interest rates, are creating another housing bubble — but many of them are paying cash, which explains why prices are soaring in some areas, but lending to homeowners is flat, the Post said.

via upi.com

Renters Fade as Recovery Takes Hold | North Salem NY Real Estate

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With home sales reaching multi-year highs and prices outpacing expectations in the first quarter, the housing recovery is restoring public confidence in homeownership and raising questions about the future demand for expansion of single and multi-family rental capacity.

Even though first-time home buyers are frustrated by difficulties getting financing and meager inventories of entry-level homes for sale, the robust recovery seems to be changing public attitudes towards homeownership.

In its quarterly forecast last week, Fannie Mae’s economists projected that existing-home sales, which were up 9.4 percent last year, will grow by an additional 6.9 percent this year, to 4.98 million homes, compared to last month’s projection of a 10.5 percent jump this year, to 5.15 million homes. They estimated existing-home sales will rise 5.5 percent in 2014, to 5.26 million homes, compared to last month’s prediction of a 6.2 percent rise.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Housing markets characterized by ‘egotistical’ prices, gun-shy buyers | North Salem NY Homes

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his post — the first of what will be a regular series — is based on an email response from real estate agent Mary Giroux to this week’s “Taking Inventory” Facebook post. Every week, Inman News invites readers to share thoughts and insights about the real estate sector. Your input helps Inman News shed light on the latest issues and trends that are redefining the industry.

Today’s housing market is a weird animal.

Consumers traumatized by the housing crisis are treading with caution as they wade into a market that, to many observers, is still brimming with once-in-a-lifetime deals. At the same time, many sellers are seeking to capitalize on the inventory shortage, pricing their homes unreasonably high, in the opinion of some agents.  

The tendency is so strong that some sellers are listing their homes at prices one agent has described as outright “egotistical.” 

Perhaps that isn’t so surprising. People who saw their home values plummet during housing bust are probably more than eager to demand a price that pushes the limits of fair value — and recoup some of the wealth that they lost.    

But the specter of the housing crisis is also sharp in buyers’ minds. Once lured by the promise of a “buyer’s market,” many are now finding themselves locked in bidding wars.

via inman.com

Circa: News reinvented for your phone | Mt Kisco Realtor

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You lead a very busy life. A lot of us admit that social media keeps us “in the know” on events and news, but you need to catch up quick. Maybe you just need to squeeze in some time for content research for your blog.

A mobile app called Circa has reinvented how, and where, you view the latest news. If you don’t have time for all the “extras” that come with news, Circa’s got a team of editors and writers to give you the most important pieces of information in a story. It’s all beautifully set up for your phone too. Let’s check it out.

The thing I love about Circa is that it’s very intuitive. Quickly sign up for an account (optional) and you’re on your way!

via next.inman.com

North Salem Realtor | Gmail’s spam filter is killing your drip campaign: Top tips to get personal

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Businesses that sell directly to consumers love to automate their work.  Whether it’s a regular postcard blast, outsourced call center, or an email drip campaign, staying “in contact” with a company’s sphere of connections has always been easier when it is scheduled, standardized, and managed in a way that takes as little custom interaction with individuals as possible.

While the lack of unique, personal interaction could certainly be criticized, it’s indisputable that many companies have been very successful at reaching a large audience at a low cost with email drip campaigns.  The “set it and forget it” mentality is attractive to a busy marketing department, and even if it only creates a marginal return on investment, it allows salespeople to feel that they’re keeping in touch with their client base.  Email drip campaigns allow us to reach a larger audience, at a faster rate, with much lower labor and financial costs than nearly any other marketing.

Enter Gmail And Its Ever-Encroaching Spam Filter
Google’s Gmail products are quickly taking over the email ecosystem.  In less than ten years, Gmail went from an invitation-only beta product to the most popular web-based email in the world.  With over 400 million users. the product is becoming ubiquitous for personal email accounts.  It is also the fastest-growing business-class email platform.

In short, Gmail is the prevailing platform for consumers, and any business marketing to consumers must craft their contact plans around the parameters that Google creates.  When Gmail first started, it had a spam filter like most other email platforms.  It picked up a fair percentage of spam, but it erred on the side of caution, letting plenty of bulk mailers and generic content through to the user’s inbox.

More recently, though, Gmail’s spam filters have become aggressive.  Google’s goal is clearly to keep a user’s inbox as clean as possible.  The company has decided that a few casualties along the way are justified when the overall outcome is less spam in the inbox.  This means that a far higher percentage of newsletters, customer update emails, and other drip campaigns are finding their way directly into Gmail users’ spam folders, never to be seen by the intended recipient

via next.inman.com

Use Google Authorship to Improve SEO and Drive Traffic | Pound Ridge Realtor

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Don’t miss a huge branding opportunity: Link your Google+ profile to the content you create

google authorship SEO SERP traffic branding Use Google Authorship to Improve SEO and Drive Traffic Google is looking to put user identity at the forefront of a number of its products, including search. They are trying new ways to authenticate quality links. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt discusses this in his upcoming book, “The New Digital Age”, writing that profile verification will be directly linked to search engine rankings:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online
profiles will be ranked higher than content without such
verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking
on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining
anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

As you know from reading this blog, creating a brand is incredibly valuable for building and strengthening relationships via social media and otherwise. People have more trust in recommendations from their circle of “friends”, including companies they follow on social networks. Google Authorship has made it easier for authors and businesses to get their brands in front of prospective customers and improve ranking — they can now represent themselves alongside their content within Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). Establishing a direct link between you and your articles or posts enables Google to display your picture next to the titles and descriptions of your site’s content so you stand out from the crowd.

via pamorama.net