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Katonah NY Real Estate

Housing Recovery is Real but Risks Remain | Katonah NY Real Estate

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The U.S. housing recovery is real and underway. The end-of-year numbers are in for the primary housing measures. Existing home sales were up 9 percent in 2012 from 2011; new home sales were up 20 percent in 2012 from a year earlier and housing starts were up 27 percent this past year compared to the previous year.

Granted, these advances were based off historically low bases but we will take what we can get after six years mired in a housing recession. Perhaps a more telling statistic for the nation’s housing outlook is appreciating home values. Over the past six months, home prices increased between 4 and 9 percent, according to the major home price indexes.  Lean housing inventories (both existing and new home supply are below 5 months) combined with fewer distressed homes for sale, portend favorably for future gains in home values.

The drivers of housing demand are in place for a sustained recovery: high affordability; job growth (albeit modest); strong investor demand;  rising buyer confidence; lean home inventories; home price appreciation; and fewer distressed homes for sale. However, there are two factors that stand out that could influence the housing outlook.

Foreclosure Situation

Overall, foreclosure filings and inventories are declining, an indication that most states have worked through the bulk of their foreclosure problems, reducing downward pressure on home values. Foreclosures are down 18 percent year over year. However, an agreement between the Federal Reserve/Comptroller of the Currency and the ten largest mortgage servicers in the nation is expected to generate a mini-wave of foreclosures in the near term, exerting some downward pressure on home prices. The agreement marks the end of the robo signing scandal and permits servicers to halt the burdensome review process on mortgages that were foreclosed in the 2009 to 2010 period in exchange for $8.5 billion to eligible homeowners, including a $3.3 billion payout to borrowers and the remaining funds going to loan assistance

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Katonah NY Weekly Real Estate Report | RobReportBlog

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Katonah NY Weekly Real Estate Report  |  RobReportBlog

Katonah NY Weekly Real Estate Report
Homes for sale37
Median Ask Price$750,000.00
Low Price$359,000.00
High Price$18,995,000.00
Average Size3464
Average Price/foot$418.00
Average DOM127
Average Ask Price$2,006,454.00
via trulia.com

Foreclosure Process Hammers Florida’s Housing Market | Katonah NY Real Estate

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A sign hangs outside a house in Miami in 2010. Currently, Florida’s foreclosure legal process can take a couple of years, which critics say is hurting the housing market.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A sign hangs outside a house in Miami in 2010. Currently, Florida's foreclosure legal process can take a couple of years, which critics say is hurting the housing market.

A sign hangs outside a house in Miami in 2010. Currently, Florida’s foreclosure legal process can take a couple of years, which critics say is hurting the housing market.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A decade ago, speculators in Florida were pumping up a huge housing bubble.

“You couldn’t go wrong,” Tampa real estate attorney Charlie Hounchell says. In that overheated period from 2001 to 2006, “you could buy a house and make $100,000 a year later by selling it,” he says.

But the party ended in 2007 and the hangover persists. The state now has the highest foreclosure rate in the country, beating out Nevada for the first time in five years.

Experts say the legal process in Florida is the key reason for the sluggish pace of foreclosures there.

A Three-Minute Trial

The busy lobby inside the Hillsborough County courthouse in Tampa is noisy with defendants, lawyers, even crying babies. But inside a fourth-floor courtroom, it’s all business — as focused and streamlined as possible.

“I enter a final judgment of foreclosure for the total sum of $194,256.49 with a public sale date of March 11 at 10 a.m.,” Judge Judy Pittman Biebel says as she delivers a verdict. The entire foreclosure trial took about three minutes.

Biebel is a retired judge from Panama City, Fla., who travels to Tampa to sit on the bench for a week at a time — specifically to handle foreclosure cases.

“We work cheap,” she says with a laugh, “and we’re paid $350 a day.”

The state funds these additional judges to help deal with the enormous backlog of foreclosures. One in every 32 Florida households received a notice of default, auction or repossession in 2012 — more than double the national average.

Florida is getting it from both ends: Foreclosures are still coming in at a high rate, and they’re very slow going out. In fact, it’s taking nearly 2 1/2 years to get through the judicial process.

Biebel says the courts stay busy.

“Today was all nonjury trials,” she says. “Yesterday was various motions all day long. So we sit and do this all day long. “

And this speedy trial — over in just minutes — stands in stark contrast to the foreclosure process, which typically starts years earlier.

Real estate agents say the backlog of distressed homes makes it tough for the Florida housing market to recuperate. Those homes depress prices and create uncertainty in neighborhoods.

Florida’s ‘Broke’ Legal Process

Why does it take so long to get these foreclosed houses back on the market?

Analysts say the cumbersome legal process in Florida sets the state apart from other hard-hit states.

But judges say they’re not at fault. They say banks need to get a handle on finding promissory notes that have been shipped all over the country and on organizing their paperwork.

Others, like Sharmon Lenth, blame foreclosure defense lawyers. She’s the president of a small credit union that has been trying to foreclose on a house for years. She watched the proceedings from the courtroom gallery.

“These people, they’ve lived in this house over 2 1/2 years for absolutely … for nothing,” she says.

Lenth doesn’t want the judge to give the homeowners any more time.

“We worked with these folks,” she says. “We worked with them starting back in 2008. We combined things for them so we lowered their payments. Eight months later we worked with them again, to help them to get through some tough times. They made 14 payments on that, they defaulted on it and hired one of these attorney groups.”

The homeowners didn’t attend the trial, but their attorney, Satyen Gandhi, was at court. Gandhi said the loan modification expired after two years, leaving his client unable to make payments again.

Biebel ended up giving the borrowers more than 60 days to leave the house.

Lenth was disappointed. She says the members of her credit union needed to acquire that house and have it sold.

“The whole process is just broke. It’s just broke,” she says.

No Quick Solution Seen

Lenth says unscrupulous foreclosure attorneys are using delaying tactics to tie up the process. But even with the complaints about the process, it doesn’t appear that it will change anytime soon.

Nor should it, says Hounchell, the real estate attorney. He says the judicial review is an important protection for homeowners — a protection that they don’t get in most other states.

“But comparing one state to another is not necessarily fair, because Nevada is a nonjudicial foreclosure state,” he explains. “In Florida, the consumer has much more opportunity to remedy their default situation.”

They’re going to need those opportunities, because experts say the foreclosure crisis won’t end anytime soon.

via npr.org

Five Reasons to “Dislike” Social Media | Katonah Realtor

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The benefits of social media are clear: huge outreach, easy to use, low cost and (assumed) high ROI, not to mention a wide variety of options. In no way would I recommend anyone stop using social media as a marketing tool. In fact, I’m a huge advocate of it. But after months or even years of use, you will likely learn, there are a lot of things to hate about these websites; that even though it’s become an essential marketing channel, social media still sucks. There are plenty of posts about Facebook rants as well. These things can sap the life from you if you aren’t careful. Be sure to be aware of these bad qualities so your business can still make the most of this marketing phenomenon. Here are five things I dislike about social media and how to overcome them:

  1. Five Reasons to “Dislike” Social Media image dislike button 300x140The grammar, typos and autocorrect errors. Everyone is in a rush these days. “I love you” suddenly becomes “I luv u.” There are shortcuts for everything. LOL, TTYL, BRB… I could go on 4evr. Grammar goes out the window when users are squeezing their message into 140 characters. Typos are a normal occurrence since many messages are posted quickly without being double checked for errors. And with smart phones becoming the standard, autocorrect has become the new typo. You spell a word wrong and you can blame it on autocorrect. Or if your thumbs are just going at it too fast, who knows what your message will end up looking like. For businesses, I’d encourage you to treat your Facebook statuses and Tweets just like you would print ads. Give them a second glance and make sure your writing is up to par. Try to use a laptop or desktop if possible. Phones simply make it too easy to make mistakes. If you want followers to take you seriously then you don’t want them to see you as another one of their lazy buddies.
  2. The minimal shelf life. If you have a sale or promotion going on at your business, one post about it just won’t cut it. What you post on Monday morning is long gone by Tuesday. Social media has a multimillion user reach, but for each individual update, the reach is short lived. To overcome this, businesses need to be consistent with posts and updates. If you are running a sale for the week, make sure your followers know. Make each post a little different and make it fun. Don’t overdo it though; I wouldn’t recommend more than two of the same topic posts in the same day.
  3. The lack of control over the software. Let’s face it, social media changes at the drop of a hat. The minute you get used to a forum and style, it gets changed. There is nothing you can really do to prevent this because you don’t own the software. To prepare though, keep your marketing strategy simple. Do not rely on posting an update in an exact way, shape or form but instead just plan on what you will say and when. Do not plan too far ahead, so if there is a change, there is only a one or two week transition to your new plan.
  4. The overkill. Personal users of social media talk about everything. Moms post about being thrown up on and every milestone their child reaches. Students post about drinking too much, sleeping in and college sports. Men post about cars, electronics, guns and politics. And nearly everyone seems to post abundantly about what they are eating or what they are doing all day long.If you are a business, post only about your business.If you are a small business owner and you have a basic fan page versus a huge sponsored costly Facebook business page, it may be tempting to mix your business with personal. “Little Sophie had a big diaper explosion so I’m behind on custom necklace orders this morning. Sorry ladies!” In a sense, you want your followers to know you are human but bringing your kids into it, especially with something that’s way TMI (see I did it…) is not acceptable. It’s not professional and enough gross excuses will have your readers running.
  5. It’s transparent. The worst thing about social media is the ability for an individual to be anyone they want. One user can have five profiles if they really wanted. ROI cannot be determined because of this. There’s a systematic approach to knowing how many people read each of your posts, follow you or like your page but this does not tell you how much money you are making based on the time you spend on social media. This is one of the biggest complaints businesses have about social media. Facebook has a pages app that helps businesses in this respect but it still has the loophole of not knowing how many of those “reaches” belong to an individual person rather than the same person 100 times. Keep this in mind before putting a lot of money into your social media marketing, especially if you need to know accurate figures for ROI.

What do you think? What are your least favorite qualities about social media websites or marketing using them?

Five Reasons to “Dislike” Social Media image

Author: Megan Totka     Megan Totka RSS Feed

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. She has spent time working for major… View full profile

This article originally appeared on Webbiquity | B2B Marketing Blog and has been republished with permission.

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via business2community.com

Foreclosure Hot Spots are Far from Healed | Katonah NY Homes

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Data reports showing prices zooming in Florida and California markets that once led the foreclosure hit parade mask the reality that prices fell so far in some of those metros they still have a long way to go to reach their peaks in 2007-if they ever do so.

Many markets lost more than 60 percent of equity and the latest November price report from Lender Processing Services shows how far some have to go. Big differences between peak-to-current prices are a measure of how many homeowners are underwater and still far from the point when they will be free of negative equity, the single greatest factor in foreclosures.

Moreover, such great differences between 2007 and current prices locks an entire generation of owners into their existing homes and makes it impossible to refinance or sell.

Peak to current price differences in the largest states that are still hurting: Florida 40.1 percent; Arizona 37.4 percent; California 35.9 percent; Illinois 30.1 percent; Georgia 27.7 percent and Michigan 26.1 percent.

Perk to current price differences in the largest metros that are still hurting: Las Vegas 53.9 percent; Riverside/ San Bernardino 44.8 percent; Orlando 43.4 percent; Sacramento 41.8 percent; Miami 40.5 percent; Phoenix 38.5 percent; Tampa 37.7 percent; and Oxnard 34.8 percent.

via realestateeconomywatch.com