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Buying, selling sides of housing market down | Chappaqua Homes
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Latest Figures Show New Home Sales and Prices Drop in New York | Chappaqua Real Estate
The New York, NY market saw a drop in new home closings year-over-year in November, a downhill move after a bump in October 2013. New home closings saw a 13.0% decline from a year earlier to 547. This was after the housing market saw a 39.6% hike year-over-year in October.
A total of 7,604 new homes were sold during the 12 months that ended in November, down from 7,686 for the year that ended in October.
As a percentage of overall housing closings, new home closings accounted for 5.2%. This is a decline 7.4% of closings a year earlier. For new and existing homes, closings increased year-over-year in November after also increasing in October year-over-year.
New York Ranks As Worst State For Taxpayers | Chappaqua Real Estate
New York is the worst state in the country to be a taxpayer, according to rankings released by WalletHub.com.
The Empire State ranked 51st (including Washington, D.C.) with an average annual state and local tax burden of $9718, which is 40 percent higher than the national average, according to WalletHub.
Wallethub ranked each state in the following categories to come up with its ranking: Real estate tax, state income tax, local income tax, vehicle property tax, vehicle sales tax, sales and use tax, fuel tax, alcohol tax, food tax and telecommunications tax.
New York’s neighbors didn’t fare well in the rankings, either. Connecticut was ranked no.48 while Vermont, New Jersey and Pennsylvania ranked 45th, 44th and 39th, respectively.
Wyoming ranked as the best state to live in as a tax payer with an annual average tax burden of $2365, or 66 percent below the national average.
Alaska, Nevada, Florida and South Dakota rounded out the top 5.
http://chappaqua.dailyvoice.com/news/new-york-ranks-worst-state-taxpayers
Millions of renters say they really want to buy a home | Chappaqua Real Estate
Millions of Americans say they want to buy a home this year, but many won’t be able to, according to a new survey from Zillow.
The reasons: Limited supply of homes, soaring prices and strict lending standards.
“The dream of homeownership remains very much alive and well,” said Zillow’s chief economist Stan Humphries. “But these aspirations must also contend with the current reality, and in many areas, conditions remain difficult.”
In all but one of 20 metro areas Zillow surveyed, 5% or more of residents said they wanted to buy a home over the next 12 months. The desire is particularly strong for renters: 10% of them want to buy. That would translate into 4.2 million first-time buyers, double the number who purchased in 2013.
That won’t happen. Inventories of homes for sale are up slightly, but there are still many local shortages.
And in some markets, like San Francisco, New York and Seattle, tight supply has translated into sky high prices few first-time buyers can afford. Nationwide, home prices are up some 11% last year, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates have also been moving higher. The average rate for a 30-year fixed is about 4.3%, up about 0.8 of a percentage point compared with a year ago. That has made loan payments on a $200,000, 30-year mortgage about $90 a month more expensive.
7 Facebook Marketing “Tips” and “Tricks” That Don’t Actually Work | Chappaqua Realtor
People will go to all sorts of lengths to get attention from a small subset of Facebook’s 1.23 billion monthly active users. Sometimes it’s good — people focus on creating more compelling content or integrating Facebook with the rest of their marketing strategy. Though it takes more time, their Facebook Page grows steadily and actually delivers results. Continue reading
Big Investors Boosting Home Prices, And Not Everyone’s Pleased | Chappaqua Real Estate
It’s taken several years, but in many parts of the country, home prices are nearly back to where they were at the peak. In places like Florida, where the housing recession hit hard, home prices rose last year by one-fifth or more.
A major factor in the price rise is hedge funds, private equity firms and other large investors. They’ve moved aggressively into the residential market over the past two years, buying tens of thousands of distressed properties, often at bargain prices.
Some analysts are worried that those bulk purchases will leave middle-class buyers out in the cold.
One place where investors have been very active is Florida’s Palm Beach County. Jeff Lichtenstein is a real estate agent there, and he’s busy. He’s listing and selling homes at a pace reminiscent of the go-go days of the last real estate boom back in 2005 and 2006. “I have 19 or 20 under contract right now, which is the most I’ve had at any given time,” he says.
Lichtenstein is currently showing a home he has listed in PGA National, a resort and residential development with more than 5,000 homes. It’s a community of palm trees, lakes, golf courses and manicured lawns.
“This was built in ’92 or ’93. Three bedrooms, three baths,” he explains as he shows off the house, which has a back patio looking out onto a golf course. “The view is what people come here to Florida for.”
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/286261937/big-investors-boosting-home-prices-and-not-everyones-pleased
10 cities where ordinary people can no longer afford homes | Chappaqua NY Homes
It now seems pretty clear that late 2012 or early 2013 was the ideal time to purchase a home: Real-estate prices and interest rates were both near record lows, creating an unprecedented buying opportunity for those who could muster a down payment and qualify for a mortgage.
Home affordability is still pretty good by historical standards, but typical buyers are once again being priced out in at least two dozen markets ranging from coastal hotspots to lower-cost inland cities. Three factors are pushing the cost of owning a home beyond the financial reach of ordinary families: Mortgage rates are ticking upwward as the Federal Reserve backs away from the super-easy monetary policy of the past five years. Home prices are rising as the economy recovers. And incomes are barely budging, which means typical families are once again falling behind as they try to bank enough to buy a home.
We used data from research firm RealtyTrac to determine where housing affordability is deteriorating the most. At the top of the list is Salinas, Calif., where a median-priced home rose 40% from the end of 2012 to the end of 2013, to $388,000. When rising interest rates are factored in, the income required to purchase a typical home rose by a whopping 58%.
The 10 areas in the list below are ranked by the increase in income required to buy a typical home from December 2012 to December 2013. We also included RealtyTrac’s affordability-index rating for the county each city is located in, to exclude cities in which required incomes have risen but homes are still relatively cheap. (The affordability index represents the median income per county as a percentage of the required income for a typical home purchase, so cities with a rating below 100 are less affordable while those above 100 are more affordable). We also grouped cities in northern and southern California into two entries, since there are so many of them. Here are the 10 areas where home affordability is deteriorating the most:
Source: RealtyTrac
With home prices rising nationwide by an average of about 11% in 2013, the income required to buy a typical home rose in all but a handful of cities. Still, affordability remains strong in the majority of markets, says Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac. Here are the 10 cities where affordability has either improved during the past year, or barely changed (affordability-index data isn’t available for every city).
Luxury Bunker on Hawaii’s Big Island Hopes For $26.5M | Chappaqua Homes
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Location: Ninole, Hawaii Price: $26,500,000 The Skinny: Picture a tropical paradise, where a beautiful stream busily works its way down the flank of a huge volcanic cone, snaking through a lush stand of trees before tumbling down a cliff into the ocean far below. Now picture a four-story reinforced concrete bunker, complete with helicopter pad, waterslide, and Olympic-size pool, plopped down at the edge of that cliff, and there you have Water Falling, an crazily baroque compound that reads like a cartoonish mixture of Syndrome’s lair and the dino DNA lab in Jurassic Park. Just how baroque is Water Falling? While some luxury homes may be content with merely boasting a helipad and a waterfall, this 8,100-square-foot manse on Hawaii’s Big Island dials the ostentation up to 11 with a glass elevator, a golf course, an elevated basketball stadium, and a high-dive platform. Water Falling is asking $26.5M, but bargain hunters (and Bond villains) should be aware that the manse faces the auctioneer’s gavel on March 22 in a no-reserve, highest-bidder-wins auction.
http://curbed.com/archives/2014/02/28/luxury-bunker-on-hawaiis-big-island-wants-265m.php
What $3,200/Month Can Rent You Around San Francisco | Chappaqua Real Estate
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↑ In the Excelsior, $3,200 a month will fetch you a three bedroom single-family home, complete with tiered backyard (that’s in need of some TLC). The spacious living room has a decorative fireplace and parquet flooring, and while the kitchen doesn’t have the latest and greatest stainless steel appliances and fancy cabinetry, it’s still charming and has an eat-in area. There are two bedrooms on the main level, and a lower room behind the garage that’s being advertised as another bedroom. Small pets are negotiable and there’s laundry on site.
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/25/what_3200month_can_rent_you_around_san_francisco.php
The Housing Market Is Plunging. Is It Time to Panic? | Chappaqua Real Estate
The bottom just dropped out of the housing market. Or, at least, that’s what a report released this week by the government suggests.
According to the Commerce Department, the number of housing starts — new residential construction projects commenced during the month — plummeted by 16% in January compared to December.
It was the worst monthly decline in almost three years. The only recent month that even comes close was April of last year, when housing starts fell by 15%.
The general opinion is that unusually cold and snowy weather caused the dramatic decline, as many of the East Coast’s biggest cities have been bombarded by snowstorms since the beginning of the year.
According to the Associated Press, “U.S. home construction fell in January for a second month, but the weakness in both months reflected severe winter weather in many parts of the country.”
Yet, this appears to tell only half of the story, as housing starts in the hardest-hit region, the Northeast, actually increased by 62% compared to December. It was the Midwest that suffered the biggest blow, where new home construction fell by a staggering 68%.
“While we believe the weather did impact construction activity, we think this is just part of the story, as the new construction slowdown was more broad-based,” an economist at BNP Paribas wrote in a note to clients.