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Jude Law And Sienna Miller Buy $12 Million London Townhouse | Luxury Real Estate
Jude Law and Sienna Miller have plunked down $12,298,650 for a London townhouse, and perhaps a modicum of relationship stability following a relatively tumultous period. British actors Law and Miller met during the filming of Alfie in 2003, but split up in 2005 after Law began an affair with the nanny of his three children with former wife Sadie Frost. They each had their flings (Law had a fourth child with New Zealand model Samantha Burke), but eventually rekindled their romance.Â
Though not married, the couple’s new 5,092-square-foot home certainly represents something of a commitment. With four floors and a finished basement, the Georgian-style home has 7 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. A small walled and gated courtyard leads into a grand reception hall that befits the home’s history, which dates back to 1820. Click to the jump for house photos.Â
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Beatle Wants to Sell His Aspen Ranch For $4.5 Million | Bedford Luxury Homes
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Ringo Starr and his wife, Barbara, are asking $4.5 million for their three-bedroom vacation home near Aspen, Colorado.
The 70-year-old Beatles drummer, who continues to tour with his All Starr Band, bought the home in 1990. The wood cabin sits on about 16 flat acres in Woody Creek and has frontage on Roaring Fork River. The roughly 3,200-square-foot cabin was built in 1987 and is surrounded by unused horse paddocks.Â
Bedford NY School Budget Rises Again | Bedford NY Real Estate
Next year’s budget will have to increase by 5.12 percent, or $5.97 million, Â in order to maintain current staffing and programming at the Bedford Central School District.
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School officials detailed their estimates and forecasts for next year’s budget during Wednesday’s Bedford school board meeting. Â
The ‘go forward budget,’ or the budget to maintain existing programming and services, is estimated to be $122,450,000 next school year. That represents a 5.12 percent increase from this year’s budget.Â
“We’re assuming that we’re not going to get any increase in class sections, or any changes in class sections with no problematic changes to the student needs at this point,” said Mark Betz, the district’s assistant superintendent for business and administrative services.Â
These figures also assume that the district will use $4.4 million in budget reserves to help lower the tax levy.
The budget also doesn’t take into account the possible passage of property tax cap by the state Legislature. Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo’s property tax cap proposal would limit the amount of tax school district by 2 percent or the rate inflation.
One of the biggest thing driving up the budget are increased state employee and teacher pension funds, which are anticipated to increase by 35 percent next year, according to Betz.Â
Betz said those pension contributions are mandated by the state and that the district has no control over them.Â
“Just take that $2 million and think of that in terms of your tax levy,” Betz said. “Your tax levy, right now, is at $103 million. So, essentially, 2 percent is now added to your levy before you start just in pensions.”
Astorino And Westchester Legislators Disagree Over Budget Cuts | Westchester Real Estate
Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino vetoed the 2011 budget sent to his desk by the Board of Legislators, citing reservations dealing with its revenues and spending. A total of 247 lines were struck out.
“The combination of phony revenues, wasteful spending, unfunded liabilities, illegal actions and rejection of generally accepted accounting principles jeopardizes our AAA credit ratings,” Astorino said of the $1.79 billion budget in a press announcement about his decision.
Legislators passed their budget on Friday. It calls for a two-percent tax decrease but with fewer reductions in social services than called for by Astorino, who proposed a series of cuts in November, as part of a budget version that calls for a one-percent tax decrease.
Despite the legislators’ 16-1 vote in favor of the budget, Astorino, a Republican, accused the board’s Democrats of not giving enough time for his administration or legislators in his party to scrutinize the proposal.
The legislators’ approved budget has been defended by Democrats for its treatment of taxes and services.
In an appearance before the New Castle Town Board Tuesday, County Legislator Mike Kaplowitz gave an update on the proposed budget, which he defended as something that “continues to provide essential services,” and listed what is covered.
Majority Leader Peter Harckham, whose district includes Mount Kisco and Bedford, had similar comments when the budget was passed.
Blogging About Luxury Homes At 13 Years Old | Bedford NY Real Estate
Cole Perkins pretty much gets it that he’s not exactly your average 13-year-old. For one thing, he’s totally uninterested in video games. And he attends “cyber school” — a home-schooling arrangement that tethers him to a classroom teacher via computer.
Then there’s that blogging thing. Where other kids might be blogging away about sports or television or popular music, that’s just too mainstream.
Cole Perkins blogs, instead, about luxury real estate.
He recently became something of a real estate keyword after Curbed.com posted an item about Lavish-Property.com, his fledgling site that each day features a new-to-the-market estate in North America or Europe, with extensive photography and his commentary.
The site, which he began a couple of months ago, surged from about 15 page views a day to more than 2,000 in the period immediately after the Curbed post. Things have settled down a bit since then, he said, to 400 to 500 a day. The blog, he said, is an “extracurricular activity,” a byproduct of tagging along with his parents four years ago when they were house hunting in Hershey, Pa.
“I just kind of got into houses when (my parents) were looking at houses every weekend,” he said in an interview. “I found it kind of fun, looking at different styles of architecture.”
Bedford NY Increases Real Estate Taxes With New Budget | Bedford NY Real Estate
Barring unlikely last-minute changes, Bedford property taxes will climb 2½ percent next year despite across-the-board cuts in the town’s discretionary spending.
At a public hearing Tuesday, the town board formally unveiled its tentative 2011 budget, which calls for $25.1 million in spending, largely financed by a property-tax rate of $29.38 and higher fees for town services.
The budget presented Tuesday night would automatically take effect Jan. 1 if the town board does not act on it by Dec. 20.
It cuts all departments’ spending, as it has for the past three years. In 2011, however, the departmental funding reductions, averaging about 10 percent, will extend to the town’s three libraries, which had been spared in the earlier economies.
Saying he spoke for all the libraries, Ed Baum, president of the Katonah Village Library board of trustees, told the board, “We are living in an atmosphere of great uncertainty.”
Besides Baum, only Fiona Mitchell of Bedford Hills, who urged the town to stop leaf pickups, and another audience member who agreed, were the only speakers at the hearing
Bedford
Home Mortgage Rates Climb in Bedford NY | Bedford NY Real Estate
Home-mortgage rates climbed this week, with the average rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at its highest since the end of June, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of conforming mortgages, released on Thursday.
Rates on the 30-year mortgage averaged 4.61% for the week ended Dec. 9, up from 4.46% last week. It is the fourth week in a row that the mortgage rate rose; it averaged 4.81% a year ago.
“Interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages are now almost a half percentage point higher than the record low set in mid-October, which for a $200,000 conventional loan amounts to $50 more in monthly payments,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist, Freddie Mac, in a news release.
Fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgages also rose this week, averaging 3.96%, up from last week’s 3.81%, according to the survey. The mortgage averaged 4.32% a year ago.
Meanwhile, adjustable-rate mortgages also moved higher, with the five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaging 3.6% this week, up from 3.49% last week. The ARM averaged 4.26% a year ago. And one-year Treasury-indexed ARMs averaged 3.27%, up from 3.25% last week. The ARM averaged 4.24% a year ago.
NAR AWards for Tech Tools | Bedford NY Real Estate
Mark Flavin is recognized as a recipient of the 2010 REALTOR® Technology Spotlight Award in the Pioneer category.   CRT asked a few questions.  Check out what Mark shared with us:
What is your favorite tech tool out there? What makes it so great? At the moment my favorite tech tool is Dropbox. This free online service allows you to easily share files and folders between computers and even devices. With more email providers actively blocking file attachments and putting restrictions on messages size the Dropbox public folder feature provides an easy way to securely share files with clients by sending them a link rather than an attachment. Finally Dropbox allows you to collaboratively share files with other Dropbox uses which is a great way to work on shared resources without managing multiple attachments.Â
Where do you get the latest technology information to keep you ahead of the curve? Each morning I read/skim through approximately 120 different blogs, online news sites and magazines. But the best source of information for me is our members and association staff. I listen to what they are trying to do in the field or what pain-points they are encountering in a transaction and then I proactively look for the tools and services to address these challenges. Since our members are always trying to stay inline and ahead of the consumer this naturally pushes me forward.
As a tech thought leader – what kind of information are you looking to get your hands on? At a high level I try to keep informed of changes in consumer behavior and emerging technologies. This information along with our annual strategic planning process is critical for me to identify the right opportunities for new services or tools our members can utilize in their business. The resources from NAR including the field guides, NAR insights and member surveys are items that I regularly review and share. Ultimately though keeping in touch with agents and brokers and understanding their unique challenges from a business and service perspective is without a doubt the most critical information resource I have available to me.
What is the biggest trend you see developing in real estate right now – tech or otherwise? Right now we are seeing a convergence between smartphones, video, mobile broadband and social networking with the smartphone becoming the unified messaging and multimedia creation platform. This is impacting consumer behaviors in fundamental ways which are causing agents and brokers to make service and marketing decisions they have not been forced to consider since the emergence of the web. Consumers are expecting their agents to be available around the clock and be able to respond to requests for information across a variety of different channels. This is forcing the Brokers and Agents into new learning curves from choosing the best device to selecting their platform and how they are going to integrate these new tools into their service catalog. For example all estimates point to 2015 as being the year when mobile devices will outnumber desktops yet at the moment Brokers and Agents are just now starting to consider how their web-presence looks on these devices.
Finally, which do you like best – iPhone; Android; WindowsMobile; Blackberry; Other? Why? My two favorite devices are the iPhone and Android. With the exception of some unique platform specific features both devices are comparatively similar. The three reasons I prefer iPhone and Android are unified messaging, web display and application availability. The Blackberry does a great job at responding to emails but the iPhone and Android make it much easier to respond across a variety of channels including email, text, voice and instant messaging. Both devices provide a web experience which is largely similar to desktop whereas with the Blackberry and Windows Mobile the mobile web experience is entirely different and often times much worse than the desktop experience. Finally the infinite expandability and customization via different applications make both the Android and iPhone highly efficient multifunction purpose tools. For example you can take a video with the built in camera make some changes and upload directly to your website without ever touching a computer.