Tag Archives: Bedford Hills

Bedford Hills

Situation on housing market in 2014 will depend on the state | Bedford Hills NY Homes

Leave a reply

The real estate market of Ukraine in 2014 will be largely influenced by the state, according to experts polled by Interfax-Ukraine.

“One of the threats to the property market is the draft law initiated by Omelchenko [bill No. 3757-1 of Regions Party MP Valeriy Omelchenko], which foresees the introduction of a 15-17% tax on the sale and purchase of real estate: if it is adopted – it worth expecting the total collapse of the market,” the vice president of the Association of Professional Property Managers, Anatoliy Topal, said.

Another threatening factor for the primary housing market, according to him, is a high increase in the price of construction materials.

According to the head of the Union of Realtors of Ukraine, Oleksiy Rubanov, the main risk to the real estate market development is a lack of liquidity of households.

“As for prices, activity, the situation in 2014 will slightly differ from 2013. Depressive mood will be observed on the market in 2014 and in 2015,” he said.

In addition, the experts noted a peculiar record set by the real estate market in the past year: the number of transactions on the primary market during this period exceeded the number of deals on the secondary housing market.

“People, who are able to buy, prefer to buy housing on the primary market due to the fact that developers offer loyalty programs, installment payments, favorable loans, interesting price offers,” said Rubanov.

 

 

http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/economic/185509.html

Power: Few storm-related outages reported | Bedford Hills NY Homes

Leave a reply

Nearly everyone appeared to have electricity in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties Friday morning in the wake of the overnight snowstorm.

Consolidated Edison, Orange & Rockland Utilities, NYSEG, and Central Hudson Gas and Electric were showing few weather-related outages in the three counties.

“We had almost no activity last night,” Orange and Rockland spokesman Michael Donovan said. The dry, light snow left by the storm “didn’t have an impact on the system whatsoever,” he said.

Sidney Alvarez, a Consolidated Edison spokesman, said just a handful of Westchester customers were left without power. A fuse in a transformer in Greenburgh blew at 7:43 a.m., he said, leaving 116 customers near the intersection of Underhill Road and Central Park Avenue without lights for several hours. By about 10:45 a.m., however, power had been restored to all but eight customers in the area.

In Ossining, he said, a vehicle struck a utility pole, leaving 21 customers there without power.

“We were prepared for some major impacts on our system,” Alvarez said. “We’re quite fortunate that Mother Nature didn’t have a huge impact.”

In Yonkers, a city of 200,000 people, only seven customers were without power.

http://www.lohud.com/article/20140103/NEWS02/301030041/Power-Few-storm-related-outages-reported

Housing market could face new bubble, home price expert warns | Bedford Hills NY Homes

Leave a reply

The housing market could be in the  early stages of yet another bubble, warned Robert Shiller, co-founder of  the closely-watched Case-Shiller index on home prices.

“In the housing market, it has its own  momentum right now as people see it coming back. We’re sort of in the  beginnings of another housing bubble,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist told CNBC on Tuesday.

Single-family home prices rose less than expected in October, but  posted their strongest annualized gain in more than seven years, the closely watched survey said on Tuesday.

The S&P/Case  Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas gained 0.2 percent in  October on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, below economists’  expectation of a 0.7 percent gain. Prices rose 0.7 percent in September.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, prices were up 1 percent.

Compared to a year earlier, prices were up 13.6 percent, beating  expectations of 13 percent and marking the strongest gain since February  2006, when the increase was 13.8 percent.

Housing prices have been rising since early 2012, and a rebound in the sector has helped the U.S. recovery gain steam.

But the more subdued monthly gains “show we are living on borrowed  time and the boom is fading,” David Blitzer, chairman of the index  committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement.

“The key economic question facing housing is the Fed’s future course to scale back quantitative easing and how this will affect mortgage rates,” he said.

“We have a futures market that’s predicting the increase won’t stop  until after 2018 so we still have time to go, but it might be weaker,”  said Shiller.

The Fed recently said it would start  trimming its asset purchases by $10 billion a month in 2014. That could  push up bond yields and mortgage rates, slowing the housing rebound.

Prices in all 20 cities rose on a non-seasonally adjusted yearly  basis, led by a 27.1 percent gain in Las Vegas and followed by a 24.6  percent increase in San Francisco.

“Things are changing  fundamentally and it seems people are less excited about big homes,”  said Shiller, referring to housing trends. “The financial crisis kind of  put a damper on that enthusiasm, especially big homes far away from the  city center. There’s this new urbanism afloat. Housing is not one  thing. It’s not monolithic. I think there might be a trend toward more  urban living.”

 

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/house-prices-rise-post-biggest-gain-7-years-2D11820751

10 best suburbs | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Every year, hundreds of thousands of homebuyers are moving to the country’s most booming metropolitan areas. For those that don’t want to deal with the traffic and other hassles of big-city living, there are the suburbs. These smaller cities and towns offer proximity to everything their larger neighbors have to offer, while often being safer and less crowded.

To rank these cities, we relied on a set of criteria used to measure how safe, affordable and — ultimately — livable they are. We looked at the top 25 most populous cities in the country and then determined the three largest suburbs of each city for a total of 75 suburbs. Then, we ranked each suburb across several criteria, which included:

  • Amenities (shopping, dining, entertainment, etc.)
  • Cost of living (percent above or below national average)
  • Crime (percent above or below national average)
  • Education (student-to-teacher ratio compared to national average)
  • Employment (income and unemployment compared to national average)

Once we had that information — from sources including the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics — we were able to see how each city did in the individual criteria — on a scale of 1 to 75, with 1 being best — and also on average to give them an overall score.

 

 

 

http://realestate.msn.com/10-best-suburbs-2013

 

 

 

 

Sustainable Cork Flooring: Elegant and Eco-Friendly | Bedford Hills Real Estate

Leave a reply

Bamboo, sustainably harvested wood, and linoleum made from recycled content  are all eco-friendly hardwood flooring options. Also available at most major home  improvement stores, cork flooring is competitively priced with other kinds of  sustainable flooring, and cork is a beautiful, eco-friendly material.

Cork products are made from the bark of the cork oak tree (Quercus  suber). Much of the world’s cork comes from forests in Portugal, where the  trees’ drought resistance allows them to flourish. Harvesters cut and strip the  bark during early summer, a process that removes only the dead outer bark layers  while leaving the living cambium intact. The cork trees continue to grow  unharmed for about nine years before the bark gets harvested again.

Most of the Portuguese cork oak forests are owned by individual families who — when they’re not harvesting the oak trees’ bark — grow medicinal herbs,  produce honey, gather pine nuts, graze cattle, and raise prized Black Spanish  pigs on cork oak acorns in the forests.

Sustainable cork flooring is made by mixing an adhesive  with “waste” cork granules from bottle-stopper production. It’s available in a  range of finishes, from wood tones to tile look-alikes, and its natural  propensity to repel water and provide acoustic insulation are bonus qualities.  Keep your eyes peeled for other sustainable cork products as well, including  wall insulation that’s growing in popularity in Europe because of its natural  fire resistance and sound-proofing ability. If you’d like to learn about and  support sustainable cork harvesting, go to Amorim Cork, and choose wine with stoppers made of real  cork. Cheer

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/sustainable-cork-flooring-zm0z13djzsor.aspx#ixzz2lO15Bu7D

Bedford Hills sales up 50% | Median Price down 20% | #RobReportBlog

Leave a reply
Bedford   Hills NY Real Estate ReportRobReportBlog
20136 months ending 11/202012
15Sales10up 50%
$545,000.00median sold price$683,750.00down 20%
$170,000.00low sold price$323,199.00
$2,800,000.00high sold price$3,995,000.00
2129average size3194
$320.00ave. price per foot$310.00
158ave days on market185
$696,000.00average sold price$1,192,970.00
93.99%ave sold to ask94.59%

Home affordability sees biggest drop since 2004 | Bedford Hills Real Estate

Leave a reply

There is a downside to rapidly rising home prices: declining home affordability.

The share of new and existing homes affordable to median-income families plunged in the third quarter, to 64.5 percent, according to an index report from the National Association of Home Builders released today. That’s down from 69.3 percent in the second quarter — the biggest drop since second-quarter 2004.

“Housing affordability is being negatively affected by a ‘perfect storm’ scenario,” said NAHB Chairman Rick Judson in a statement.

“With markets across the country recovering, home values are strengthening at the same time that the cost of building homes is rising due to tightened supplies of building materials, developable lots and labor.”

NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe said higher mortgage rates also contributed to the decrease in affordability.

The most affordable major housing markets in the U.S. last quarter were Indianapolis-Carmel, Ind., and Syracuse, N.Y., with 93.3 percent of homes sold in the third quarter affordable to families earning the areas’ median income.

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/home-affordability-sees-biggest-drop-since-2004/#sthash.TS4dwZEw.dpuf