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California luxury market outpaces traditional home sales | Bedford Hills Real Estate
California is known for its rich and famous property owners, but could they be getting richer? The number of California homes that sold for $1 million or more jumped to a five-year high in 2012.
Analysts believe a recovering economy, rising home prices and a record number of cash purchases are all driving factors behind this increase.
Taking things a notch higher, the number of homes sold for more than $5 million reached an all-time high.
San Diego-based DataQuick reported that a total of 26,993 homes sold for $1 million or more in 2012, a 26.9% increase from the 21,267 sold in 2011.
It seems that the luxury-home market is outpacing overall sales in California. The 2012 luxury-home increase of 26.9% was significantly higher than the 8.2% increase in overall sales.
“It should go without saying that buyers and sellers in the prestige market tend to respond to different motivations and incentives than the rest of the market,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president. “Job security, down payment sizes and mortgage interest rates don’t play the same role. Returns on investments in a low interest-rate financial environment and safe-haven investing do play a role.”
This shift in sales toward luxury homes has established itself within the past two years.
In the state of California, 697 homes were sold for more than $5 million in 2012, compared to the 491 sold in the Golden State in 2011.
For homes ranging from $4 million to $5 million, a record 460-homes sold, up from the 344 sold in 2011.
DataQuick reported that the most expensive confirmed purchase last year was an 8,930 sq. ft., 4-bedroom, 4.5 bathroom luxury-home in Woodside, Calif., selling for $117,500,000 in November.
Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, says it’s not surprising that luxury homes are flying off the market right now.
“If you look at the 1%, they are doing better than everybody else since the recovery started in 2009,” said Green. “The most recent data I’ve seen shows that benefits of the recovery have gone 93% to the top 1%, so it’s not surprising that their demand for housing is stronger than everybody else.”
via housingwire.com
Cleveland company puts brighter face on blight | Bedford Hills Real Estate
via housingwire.com
The Many Hats of a Community Manager | Bedford Hills Realtor
The role of a community manager can vary immensely from company to company, and industry to industry. What remains similar is that they’re tasked with the overarching goal of building, growing and managing communities around a specific brand or mission statement.
San Francisco-based community software developer Get Satisfaction has just released an infographic that pays homage to the average community manager, and the various roles they may fulfill throughout the course of the day. In 2012′s “Community Manager Report” by Social Fresh it was revealed that a majority of community managers put in more than 50 hours of work per week across authoring articles, forum responses, being a diplomat, a brand cheerleader, and communicating issues from the consumer-end to the product team.
Here’s a closer look at the different hats a community manager may wear throughout the course of a normal business day:
This article is an original contribution by Elie Ayrouth.
Case-Shiller Downplays the Doubters | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Weak prices in a number of late fall markets as evident in NAR’s latest pending sales index has been causing concern in the real estate circles, but Case-Shiller, the final word on prices, downplayed the doubters today.
Through November 2012, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed home prices rose 4.5 percent for the 10-City Composite and 5.5 percent for the 20-City Composite.
Year-over-year prices rose in 19 of the 20 cities and fell in New York. In 19 cities prices rose faster in the 12 months to November than in the 12 months to October; Cleveland prices rose at the same pace in both time periods. Phoenix led with the fastest price rise – up 22.8 percent in 12 months as it posted its seventh consecutive month of double-digit annual returns.
“The November monthly figures were stronger than October, with 10 cities seeing rising prices versus seven the month before.” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
“Phoenix and San Francisco were both up 1.4 percent in November followed by Minneapolis up 1.0%. On the down side, Chicago was again amongst the weakest with a drop of 1.3 percent for November.
Tyler Perry’s Former Bachelor Pad Sold for $11.25 Million | Bedford Hills NY Homes
via zillowblog.com
5 Must-Haves for Social Media Management | Bedford Hills Realtor
5 Must-Haves For Social Media Management
Social media has grown from a curiosity to an integral piece of corporate strategy in the space of only a few years. Nearly overnight, companies have brought on whole teams of specialists to craft effective social media strategies and manage multiplying numbers of social media accounts. Companies are hungry for better social media tools to engage their constituents. Below is a list of five features key to delivering on a social media strategy.
1. SCHEDULING
Social media doesn’t sleep, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to! Ensure your social media management tool of choice allows you to schedule messages in advance. So, even while you are in meetings with clients in New York, you can schedule messages to go out to your customers in Tokyo during their workday.If you want to take scheduling to the next level, look for a tool that offers the ability to schedule large batches of messages at once. This will be an incredibly useful time-saver when it comes to managing campaigns or contests that require heavy messaging around a certain period of time
2. GEO
When it comes to interacting with your customers, those in different locations may have different needs, speak different languages or follow different trends. You’re going to want a tool that optimizes your searches and filters your searches by language to help you curate relevant content for different demographics.3. KEYWORDS
Social media is also an effective way for businesses to keep their finger on the pulse. Setting up keyword search streams provides insight into what your customers think is trendy. This can assist with the development of a marketing strategy that focuses on your customer’s lifestyles and personal preferences.Keywords are useful for keeping track of competitors’ activities but they’re also useful for tracking brands that are complementary to your offering. If your product or service is often purchased in conjunction with another product or service, keep an eye on the complementary product’s social media activity to take advantage of promotions or recent sales, as these are potential leads ready to be converted.
4. COLLABORATION
It takes two to tango, especially when it comes to being social. Collaboration is key when it comes to developing and executing an effective social media campaign. Ensure your social media management tool enables you to seamlessly collaborate with your team to ensure you execute an integrated social media management strategy.5. REPORTING
Gone are the days of social media purely being about “building buzz.” It is now a line item in budgets as companies invest resources in these channels and there is an expectation for reports which show ROI for social media outreach.Make sure your tool has the ability to analyze important metrics such as click-through rates on shortened links, clicks by region and top referrers. It’s also important to have access to Facebook Insights and Google Analytics.
The most effective tools will provide the ability to access in-depth granular metrics on the efficacy of your social media programs. This will allow you to determine which messages resulted in the highest number of conversions, which platform is providing the greatest return and which time of day is most effective to drive traffic.
WHAT IT TAKES TO GO PRO
Social media is here to stay and to maintain a competitive advantage, businesses need to stay abreast of this ever-evolving space. I’ve recently completed the training and become a Certified HootSuite Professional and have found that HootSuite is a tool many find very useful. I am also familiar with TweetDeck and Adobe Social. The point is, there are products out there to meet your needs.What are you using to satisfy these 5 Must-haves?
Warren Group: Massachusetts housing market as ‘turned the corner’ | Bedford Hills Realtor
In another sign that the housing market may be on the mend, the median sale price of single-family homes in Massachusetts rose more than 12 percent in December to $300,000, the first time since August that median home prices have broken the $300,000 mark, the Warren Group said Thursday.
Looking at the entire year, the Warren Group added that single-family home sales in Massachusetts rose 18 percent in 2012, marking 12 consecutive months of year-over-year sales gains and the best year on record since 2006.
“I would characterize 2012 as the year of robust recovery in the real estate market,” Warren Group chief executive Timothy M. Warren Jr. said in a statement. “It is clear we have turned the corner and are gaining ground rapidly. I contrast the 18 percent gain last year with the decline of 6 percent in 2011.”
As for condo sales in December, they rose 5.4 percent to 1,402 units. The median condo price in December rose 8 percent to $275,000, the Warren Group said.
For 2012, condo sales were up more than 25 percent to 19,061 units.
The Massachusetts Association of Realtors issued a separate monthly report Thursday on the local housing market. The association uses a slightly different method to track real estate activity than the Warren Group does.
According to the association’s press release, 3,737 detached single-family homes sold in December, a 13 percent increase from the previous December. December 2012 was the 18th straight month of year-over-year increases.
The median selling price for single-family home in December was $303,500, which was up 10.4 percent from the price in December 2011.
In the Bay State, there were 1,434 condominiums sold this December, a 14.2 percent increase from the same time last year.
The median selling price for condominium in December was $282,750, which was up 8.7 percent from December 2011.
“December capped off a very active year in 2012 as the real estate market in Massachusetts made significant progress towards recovery,” association president Kimberly Allard-Moccia said in a statement. “With the ‘fiscal cliff’ averted for now and pending activity remaining strong, we anticipate a healthy start to 2013.”
Allard-Moccia suggested that there are some concerns about the short supply of homes on the market.
“2012 was the type of year the market needed to help it eventually recover,” said Allard-Moccia. “With inventory continuing to go down, we’re at risk for slipping back to where we were. A truly vibrant market has a good selection of homes at all price levels for all types of buyers.”
via bostonglobe.com
Realogy franchisor shows how social is done | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s use of social media marketing as both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) strategies is the focus of a case study developed by the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario.
Since launching in 2008, the Realogy Holdings Corp. franchisor has signed up brokerages representing more than 8,000 sales associates in 26 states and Canada. President and CEO Sherry Chris attributes Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s success “in large part to the company’s strategic and mindful approach to targeting both consumers and the real estate industry as a whole.”
“When we launched Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, few businesses were leveraging the tremendous power of social media to drive brand awareness, develop business opportunities and fuel growth,” Chris said in a statement. “Our success underscores the value of using new media channels to engage with customers, business partners and members of the real estate industry.”
As an alumna of the Richard Ivey School of Business, Chris said she was “honored to share the knowledge our company has acquired” and that the case study will encourage other companies to look outside traditional business practices.
According to a summary of the 12-page case study, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate “has grown rapidly and has experienced tremendous success with its B2B social media efforts. Now, several years after the formation of the company, the president and chief executive officer must decide how to leverage what she has learned from the B2B effort to create a B2C social media program.”
The case study is described as suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate marketing courses, exploring:
- the implications and potential value of leveraging an existing brand for a new business opportunity.
- issues and opportunities surrounding a franchise business model.
- differences between a consumer and trade social media strategy.
- the development of a social media strategy and tactical plan, including resource requirements and appropriate success metrics.
- international expansion and its impact on new media marketing like social media.
Author Raymond Pirouz teaches marketing at the Richard Ivey School of Business and he is the author of three books. Pirouz has also taught at UCLA Extension, the Art Center College of Design, the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine and the Master of Digital Experience Innovation (MDEI) program at the University of Waterloo-Stratford.
via inman.com
LinkedIn Removes its Best Feature | Bedford Hills Real Estate
I was beyond dismayed to receive an email this morning from LinkedIn, indicating that they are retiring their (in my opinion) best feature: LinkedIn Answers.
LinkedIn Answers is (was) a Quora-type question and answer forum, where business people could ask for advice in a variety of topical categories. In turn, professionals could answer questions in their area of expertise, which in my experience, was THE best lead-generating activity one could do on LinkedIn.
Why LinkedIn Answers was the Best
LinkedIn Answers was better than any question and answer forum on the web for several reasons:
1) Credibility: Nowhere else on the web can you get an answer to a question and immediately click through to review the person’s entire professional history. This provided an instantaneous and thorough way to evaluate the credibility of the advice given.
LinkedIn Answers also helped professionals add credibility to their LinkedIn profiles. The act of answering a question generated an activity item on one’s profile, which also showed up in the news feed of their connections. Additionally, after answering enough questions in a category, one could earn “Expert” status and be featured on the Answers homepage and in those categories.
2) Focus: The questions and answers being traded on LinkedIn Answers were about business. Although other question and answer sites have categories for business, there are none that are as business-focused and as widely used by business professionals in the world. Because of LinkedIn’s enormous worldwide presence, one could find an expert to answer even the most obscure/niche business questions through LinkedIn Answers.
3) Organization: Today’s LinkedIn email suggests asking questions in groups and via polls. This is highly ineffective for two reasons. First, groups are incredibly noisy places where people constantly try to promote themselves. In my experience, very little “real” discussion occurs in groups. Secondly, Polls have no categorization and are only viewed by connections. In LinkedIn Answers, I could ask my question in a specific category and get an answer from an expert in that category, regardless of whether I was connected to them or not.
4) Lead Generation: In the experience of my colleagues, clients, and myself, LinkedIn Answers was hands-down THE best lead generation tool on the site – perhaps even on the entire web. The psychological concept of reciprocity never failed me when I was answering questions on LinkedIn Answers. If I took the time to give a very thorough and helpful answer, the asker would nearly always write me back a personal message of thanks, and would often either ask to have a further discussion (hello, LEAD!), connect with me and follow me elsewhere (increasing my exposure to their network), and/or share my content with others (because it helped them so much). The “pay it forward” and “give to get” concepts that go along with answering questions on LinkedIn Answers never failed to get me leads and enhance my business presence on the web.
Irreplaceable Value
Where can I go for all of that now? Nowhere.
How LinkedIn Killed its Best Feature
LinkedIn greatly diminished the potential of its Answers feature by hiding it. It didn’t even have it’s own menu item in the site’s main navigation. One had to click on the “More” menu item at the far right to find it.
I kid you not, just last night I gave a presentation about LinkedIn to 27 business professionals, of whom nearly all were members of LinkedIn. When I asked who had heard of LinkedIn Answers, not a single hand went up. I then proceeded to tell them about the feature and show them examples of how it had produced leads for me. Many were beyond excited to try it.
I now have to message them all and tell them that LinkedIn decided to remove this incredibly valuable lead-generating tool, and that there is nothing on the web as nearly as relevant for business people as this forum was.
What Great Feature will LinkedIn Kill Next?
First they nixed the Events feature (which was GREAT for driving business people to events like seminars and webinars), and now they killed their best lead-generator.
What feature do you think they will remove next?
