Check out this website I found at newsmax.com
Fed Policy Helps Drive Housing Prices Higher | Armonk NY Homes
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Diffusion Index for Foot Traffic: Slid in March | Armonk Real Estate
Vimeo’s Nifty Tricks on Overcoming A Small Film Crew | Armonk NY Realtor
We normal folk without access to a whole bunch of money and resources and people who have time have to deal with what we have. But is there anything we can do to at least give the semblance of something professional, or at least cool, or something worth talking about? Do we have to just deal with static camera shots and frames filled with only a minimum amount of people because we can’t find any extras? The good people at the Vimeo Video School, along with Neko Neko Films, have some nifty solutions for a small crew that are easy to implement and with some imagination, can make it seem like you had a lot more people working on your video than is readily apparent.
3 Tricks For Your Impossibly Small Film Crew
Here’s the video. We’ll talk about it after:
Swipe Cut
In the video, they show someone throwing a blade at another guy, with the blade barely missing his head. This isn’t done in one take, as the danger factor is too much to do this for real. So they take advantage of the fact that people can’t normally see a quick cut in the middle of a fast camera motion by first, shooting the dangerous part where no one is in harm’s way, and quickly “swiping” (panning) the camera left-to-right or vice-versa as the blade falls harmlessly into something they don’t mind the blade hitting.
Then, on the second take, they already have the blade lodged into the wall next to the guy’s head, but swipe the camera in the same motion, so that when they go to their editor, they can cut in the middle of the quick motion on the first take, which will be undetectable on a quick glance, and go right into the second take fairly seamlessly. With a sound effect “selling” it, it looks like someone has thrown a blade at another person in one take.
They also show a cool trick where two actors take turns playing the camera operator, where it looks like there’s one person going back and forth between the actors, when it’s the actors themselves operating the camera. So each actor performs his bit on camera and the second actor swipes the camera back his way and gets in position. Then the original actor moves the camera back, and does the swipe again, with the second actor ready to perform his bit. With the same editing as the above trick, it looks like a dedicated camera operator is in the middle of the shot, panning back and forth.
There are plenty of other uses for that of course. It’s all up to the imagination.
Split Screen
By keeping your camera in the same spot, you can shoot multiple things in parts of the frame and then use your editor’s split screen capabilities to make it look like all of the things you shot were in one take, populating your frame with actors, even if you might only have two total. In this trick, they show one actor standing in the middle of the frame, with nothing on both sides. Then they shoot two actors in the background on the left side of the frame, and they do what they have to do. Then, two actors on the right side of the frame do their thing. By entering these three clips into a video editor and splitting the screen with a “crop” tool, it makes it look like all the action is happening in one take.
Smart Phone Audio
If you want someone to be in the far background of a shot, it may not appear that you’ll be able to get their audio properly. But you can use a smart phone’s recording capabilities (hopefully with a recording app, with the smart phone in a coat pocket) to record the actor in the background and then overlap the camera audio and the smart phone audio for a proper synching. Although, in this example, I’m not sure you want to have the guy in the far background sounding like he’s right next to the guy in the foreground. Selling “distance” also means making the audio sound more distant than usual. So maybe that smart phone is farther away than a coat pocket, but you may not have a choice.
There’s also the matter of people being unable to actually see the background actor’s lips move, so synching sound to that person shouldn’t be a terribly big deal. But whatever it takes to sell the effect, if you have a smart phone at your disposal, you can record a person who is farther away than normal.
We’d like to thank Vimeo and Neko Neko for the time they put into this!
via reelseo.com
How to Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly | Armonk Realtor
Lower Rates Benefit Richer Homeowners Most | Armonk Real Estate
The Federal Reserve’s policy of buying mortgage-backed securities to keep mortgage rates low may be bolstering upper tier home values rather than helping to make homeownership more affordable for entry-level buyers.
For decades home buying demand has directly reflected mortgage interest rates, but no more. One question that has baffled policy makers for six year is: Why haven’t housing markets responded to historically low mortgage rates?
In fact, record low rates have had an impact, according to a new analysis by three contributing editors of Home Value Forecast, just not the impact that the Fed anticipated.
“It is very likely that the top tiers of the owner occupied housing market are the ones benefiting the most from lower mortgage rates as this group has been less affected by credit score downgrades or more restrictive underwriting,” the economists said.
Since the housing crash in 2008, the economists, James R. Follain, Norman Miller, and Michael Sklarz, argue three factors have made lower mortgage rates relatively useless for lower income buyers.
- Credit scores for many households have been impacted by defaults, loan modifications, foreclosures, job losses and the breadth of the impact has been sufficient to affect millions of households who now must become or are already renters. Even though buying may be cheaper than renting, such households have little choice but to sit on the sidelines for a few more years.
- Tight underwriting has increased both the time required to secure a mortgage loan and the challenges for those with less secure income streams. Those paid based on self-reported productivity are being affected more severely since the lenders are now requiring more conservative assumptions on future earnings. Appraisals are also being kicked back if they are not conservative in the selection of appraisal comps, and so the risk tolerance pendulum has swung towards extreme conservatism.
- The investment appeal of housing and presumption that prices can only go up has lost its shine. Many households had stretched in the 2000-2005 run up and some even invested in second homes or investment properties hoping to flip these units at higher prices. Those late to the party got burned.
The economists analyzed the impact of low rates for fixed rate mortgages on sales in two major markets, Chicago and Phoenix,
“Affordability is definitely improved when mortgage rates are lower and yet the beneficiaries of these more attractive mortgage rates are not evenly distributed among households of all incomes and wealth. It is very likely that the top tiers of the owner occupied housing market are the ones benefiting the most from lower mortgage rates as this group has been less affected by credit score downgrades or more restrictive underwriting,” they concluded.
“At the same time we expect that investors have supported the lowest price tiers and are now bidding up the remaining REO sales in an attempt to lap up what is left of distress. Prices in the bottom housing price tiers are still dealing with foreclosure inventory hangovers in some markets with slow and clogged foreclosure systems. Markets where distress has been dispatched more expediently seem to be recovering the fastest,” they said.
Hedge Funds are Fueling Foreclosure Inflation | Armonk Real Estate
Though hedge fund purchases on a national level have had minimal impact, in the nation’s hottest foreclosure markets hedge funds, or institutional investors, are contributing to double digit foreclosure price increases and dramatic declines in REO inventories.
A new analysis of 16 of the leading foreclosure markets by CoreLogic economist Sam Khater suggests that institutional investors are driving up prices in six hot foreclosure markets where institutional investors’ purchases increased last year.
“The media has focused attention on institutional investors using cash to invest in single-family residential properties to rent, but relative to the overall market, the scale of their purchases is still very small,” Khater said. He noted that Blackstone, reportedly the largest hedge fund investor, has committed to buy 125,000 properties in 2013. By contrast, small investors purchased sone 600,000 homes using first-lien financing last year.
However, hedge funds are increasing their investments and in a few selected markets their impact was very large last year.
Phoenix saw prices rise 37 percent over 2011, Las Vegas rose 30 percent and in the balance of the six markets foreclosure prices increased by double digit amounts.
“More importantly, the ripple effects are greatly impacting the broader market,” Khater wrote. “Lower end home prices in markets with rising shares of institutional investors are up 15 percent from a year ago, compared to only 6 percent for the remaining markets.”
Khater said the large volume declines of foreclosures in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Phoenix are to do hedge fund activity, where declines in California markers are primarily to do individual investors.
Khater said institutional investors are clearly concentrated in five states: Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina. In Miami last year, hedge funds accounted for 30 percent of REO sales; 23 percent in Phoenix; 21 percent in Charlotte; 19 percent in Las Vegas; and 18 percent in Orlando.
Hedge funds were much less active in California and the Midwest. In the Midwest, REOs remained elevated compared to Florida and Southwestern markets.
“Minneapolis and Chicago are drawing less interest from both types of investors generally, relative to these other markets. Only Detroit is garnering interest from institutional investors,” Khater said.
Brokerage also buys, rehabs, manages, and flips homes | Armonk NY Real Estate
Real estate is a fairly segmented industry, and business models don’t change very much over the years. Brokerage companies buy and sell properties for prospective homeowners, investors buy properties for investments, property managers manage properties, and mortgage bankers finance properties.
Occasionally, someone wanders into the real estate business from somewhere outside of this universe and creates a totally a new model — either because he or she is brash, or not smart enough to realize this new invention is too good or too bad to be sustainable.
Such is the case with Erik Coffin, CEO of Gotham Capital Management, who is doing so many different things with his relatively new Beverly Hills-based company that I’m not even sure he can keep track of it all.
I asked him, “What’s the main thing Gotham Capital does?” He answered, without irony, “We don’t know. We make money.”
via inman.com
7 Steps to Face Your Color Fears | Armonk Real Estate
via zillowblog.com
States With Underwater Mortgages Q4 2012 | Armonk Homes
Lower Rates Benefit Richer Homeowners Most | Armonk Real Estate
The Federal Reserve’s policy of buying mortgage-backed securities to keep mortgage rates low may be bolstering upper tier home values rather than helping to make homeownership more affordable for entry-level buyers.
For decades home buying demand has directly reflected mortgage interest rates, but no more. One question that has baffled policy makers for six year is: Why haven’t housing markets responded to historically low mortgage rates?
In fact, record low rates have had an impact, according to a new analysis by three contributing editors of Home Value Forecast, just not the impact that the Fed anticipated.
“It is very likely that the top tiers of the owner occupied housing market are the ones benefiting the most from lower mortgage rates as this group has been less affected by credit score downgrades or more restrictive underwriting,” the economists said.
Since the housing crash in 2008, the economists, James R. Follain, Norman Miller, and Michael Sklarz, argue three factors have made lower mortgage rates relatively useless for lower income buyers.
- Credit scores for many households have been impacted by defaults, loan modifications, foreclosures, job losses and the breadth of the impact has been sufficient to affect millions of households who now must become or are already renters. Even though buying may be cheaper than renting, such households have little choice but to sit on the sidelines for a few more years.
- Tight underwriting has increased both the time required to secure a mortgage loan and the challenges for those with less secure income streams. Those paid based on self-reported productivity are being affected more severely since the lenders are now requiring more conservative assumptions on future earnings. Appraisals are also being kicked back if they are not conservative in the selection of appraisal comps, and so the risk tolerance pendulum has swung towards extreme conservatism.
- The investment appeal of housing and presumption that prices can only go up has lost its shine. Many households had stretched in the 2000-2005 run up and some even invested in second homes or investment properties hoping to flip these units at higher prices. Those late to the party got burned.
The economists analyzed the impact of low rates for fixed rate mortgages on sales in two major markets, Chicago and Phoenix,
“Affordability is definitely improved when mortgage rates are lower and yet the beneficiaries of these more attractive mortgage rates are not evenly distributed among households of all incomes and wealth. It is very likely that the top tiers of the owner occupied housing market are the ones benefiting the most from lower mortgage rates as this group has been less affected by credit score downgrades or more restrictive underwriting,” they concluded.
“At the same time we expect that investors have supported the lowest price tiers and are now bidding up the remaining REO sales in an attempt to lap up what is left of distress. Prices in the bottom housing price tiers are still dealing with foreclosure inventory hangovers in some markets with slow and clogged foreclosure systems. Markets where distress has been dispatched more expediently seem to be recovering the fastest,” they said.
