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California housing market slows considerably | North Salem Real Estate

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California’s massive housing market is slowing down in almost every way imaginable, according to the latest California Real Property Report from PropertyRadar.

California single-family home and condominium sales dropped 3.5% to 36,912 in May from 38,249 in April.

However, the report explained that what is unusual this month is that the decrease in sales was due to a decline in both distressed and non-distressed property sales that fell 8.6% and 2.5%, respectively.  The monthly decline in non-distressed sales is the first May decline since 2005.

On a yearly basis, sales were up slightly, gaining 2.3% from 36,096 in May 2014.

“With the exception of a few counties, price increases have slowed considerably,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of economic research for PropertyRadar. “You cannot defy gravity.”

“The environment of rising prices on lower sales volumes was destined not to last.  Higher borrowing costs since the beginning of the year and decreased affordability was bound to impact sales sooner or later. We may also be seeing the fourth year in a row where prices jumped early in the year, only to roll-over and head lower later the rest of the year,” Schnapp continued.

Back in March, PropertyRadar’s report showed California was finally ramping up for the spring homebuying season, posting that March single-family home and condominium sales surged to 31,989, a 33.1% jump from 24,031 in February. It was the biggest March increase in three years.

Meanwhile, May’s median price of a California home was nearly unchanged at $396,750 in May, down 1.8% from $404,000 in April.

Within California’s 26 largest counties, most experienced slight increases in median home prices, edging higher in 21 of California’s largest 26 counties.

Year-over-year, the median price of a California home was nearly unchanged, up 0.4% from $395,000 dollars in April 2014.

While at the county level most of California’s 26 largest counties exhibited slower price increases, four counties continued to post double digit gains.

 

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California housing market slows considerably

Buying a North Salem FSBO | North Salem Real Estate

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Selling your home without an agent is entirely possible and, in some ways, easier today than in the past. Going for sale by owner (FSBO) could be a huge cost savings, since the real estate commission is the largest expense of any home sale. But FSBO is not for everyone.

If you go this route, you must be deliberate each step of the way. You’ll have to do your research and learn your market to discover what works and what doesn’t. Are homes staged? Do people price low for multiple offers or price high and wait? Is it a strong buyers’ market, or do sellers rule? Sometimes it can be hard to know, as markets can shift by neighborhood — or even by block.

In real estate today, sometimes you only get one chance to make a first impression. If you make a mistake your first time out, the market may punish you later on. Here are some other FSBO considerations for the next-generation home seller.

Online access to pricing makes going FSBO easier today

One of the biggest hurdles for sellers is pricing their home correctly and knowing the comparable home sales. It’s easier to understand pricing today, given how much information is online — particularly for someone who lives in a home where the recent comparable home sales are cut and dry. An example of this is a newer suburban development where the floor plans, layouts, fixtures and finishes are all similar.

Research your market offline, too

Learning a real estate market doesn’t take a huge amount of effort, but it does take time. Go to open houses and see what is for sale. Start this process early, and do it often.

Monitor a few nearby homes from listing to close. Real estate agents do it day in and day out, which makes them uniquely qualified to understand a market.

Be prepared to detach emotionally

Selling a home has both financial and emotional implications, whether you sell it yourself or through an agent. Knowing that complete strangers will be running through and potentially criticizing your home is enough to make any home seller feel like a wreck.

Imagine dealing with these strangers directly. If you go the FSBO route, you are front and center from start to finish. You can’t let your emotions get the best of you, and you must focus on the investment aspect of your home.

Sometimes sellers who can’t emotionally detach find themselves leaving money on the table, alienating perfectly good buyers, or both. But if you think you can see your home objectively, as a third-party product, then you might be good to go with FSBO.

It can become a part-time job

Remember the last time you sold a car or some furniture on Craigslist? It probably required time and energy to photograph your goods, post the listings, field calls, and show the items before you finally made the sale. With real estate, you can amplify that effort 10-fold.

Going FSBO can be excellent for someone with a flexible schedule or who works from home. But getting the home ready to sell means doing all of the standard sale prep work that you would do as a seller — and then taking it a step further. You need to be ready to show the home at a moment’s notice, do follow-ups, and manage the open houses and scheduling, not to mention negotiate and see the sale through firsthand.

 

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http://www.zillow.com/blog/is-for-sale-by-owner-right-for-you-176805/

Pablo Escobar’s Island Mansion Is Now a Derelict, Beachy Ruin | North Salem Real Estate

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image.jpgPhotos by Luke Spencer via Atlas Obscura

In the late 1980s, drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was worth an estimated $30 billion and owned a number of truly ostentatious properties. His mansion in Puerto Triunfo, Colombia, where rhinos and elephants roamed freely, is the most infamous, but his party palace on a remote island off the coast of Cartagena, is no less grandiose. Indeed, the La Isla Grande property is a giant concrete complex with over 300 rooms in individual chalets, bathrooms with golden showerheads, and a helicopter-landing pad in the middle of the jungle. A writer for Atlas Obscura recently broke into the long-abandoned outpost, and found a pastel blue and coral pink-painted ruin that looked like a “strip from Miami’s South Beach” but with a “family of giant wild pigs.

 

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http://curbed.com/archives/2015/04/08/pablo-escobars-island-mansion-is-now-a-derelict-beachy-ruin.php?utm_campaign=issue-36245&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Curbed%27s+House+of+the+Day

Mortgage Rates Little Changed | North Salem Real Estate

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Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates largely calm amid mixed economic and housing data and ahead of the Friday employment report for March.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.70 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending April 2, 2015, up from last week when it averaged 3.69 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.41 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 2.98 percent with an average 0.6 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.97 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 3.47 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 2.92 percent this week with an average 0.5 point, unchanged from last week. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 3.12 percent.
  • 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.46 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, unchanged from last week. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.45 percent.

Average commitment rates should be reported along with average fees and points to reflect the total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage. Visit the following links for theRegional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quotes
Attributed to Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist, Freddie Mac.

“Mortgage rates were little changed this week entering April about where we started the year. The final estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2014 was unchanged from the prior estimate of a 2.2 percent annualized rate. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales rose 3.1 percent in February, beating expectations. The pending home sales index was at the highest level since June of 2013 when 30-year fixed mortgage rates averaged 4.07 percent, 0.37 percentage points higher than this week’s survey.”

Mortgage Rates Move Down Again | North Salem Real Estate

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Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates moving down again across the board. Average fixed rates that continue to run below four percent will help keep affordability high for those in the market to buy a home as we head into the spring homebuying season.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.69 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending March 26, 2015, down from last week when it averaged 3.78 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.40 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 2.97 percent with an average 0.6 point, down from last week when it averaged 3.06 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 3.42 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 2.92 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, down from last week when it averaged 2.97 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 3.10 percent.
  • 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.46 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, unchanged from last week. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.44 percent.

Average commitment rates should be reported along with average fees and points to reflect the total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage. Visit the following links for theRegional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quotes
Attributed to Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist, Freddie Mac.

“The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell to 3.69 percent this week following a decline in 10-year Treasury yields. Low mortgage rates are a welcome sign for those in the market to buy a home this spring season and will help to support homebuyer affordability. Existing home sales in February increased slightly, but less than expected, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million units. Meanwhile, new home sales outperformed expectations and surged 7.8 percent to an annual pace of 539,000 units.”

Producer Prices in February – Falling Prices, Except for Gypsum | North Salem Real Estate

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Producer Price Indexes (PPI) for February. Inflation in prices received by producers (prior to sales to consumers) declined 0.5% in February. The decline was dominated by a decline in prices for services and within services prices for trade, transportation and warehousing. Prices for goods also declined led by falling food prices. Energy prices leveled off in February after declines accelerated through the second half of last year and reached -10.3% in January.

Softwood lumber prices declined 1.6% in February. The Random Lengths Framing Lumber Composite Index points to further declines in March. Analysts point to softer than expected US single family construction in 2014, inventory management on the part of distributors, and softening overseas markets as factors. Additional declines will be tempered going forward by possible log shortages and continuing transportation bottlenecks.

Prices for OSB declined 2.9% after modest upticks in the prior three months. The return of mothballed capacity since 2013 has supply outpacing demand. Random Lengths indicates additional declines in March. The PPI for OSB indicates a 46% decline from the price peak in March 2013.

Prices for gypsum jumped 3.9% in February after a 4.3% increase in January reaching an all-time high. Gypsum prices are now 5.4% higher than their 2006 housing boom peak while single family housing starts remain depressed at roughly half the normal level of production.

blog ppi 2015_03

 

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http://eyeonhousing.org/2015/03/producer-prices-in-february-falling-prices-except-for-gypsum/

London’s ‘iceberg homes’ plumb the city’s depths | North Salem Real Estate

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In London’s most upmarket districts, shovel-wielding teams are hard at work in what look like mines hidden beneath luxury homes, sidestepping the British capital’s planning rules by expanding underground.

Some of their more hi-tech kit may end up buried there — it is reported that the cost of bringing it back above ground is more than its value — and the bowels of the British capital have already become a graveyard for around 1,000 excavating machines.

The trend started in the late 1990s, when residents developed small basements, calculating it was a cheaper way of increasing floorspace than moving house while sticking to the strict height rules imposed by the city’s conservation bodies.

But Paul Schaaf, partner of architectural firm The Basement Design Studio, told AFP that since the 2008 recession, his firm has largely been called in to help with vast spaces beneath houses in the opulent neighbourhoods of south and west London.

“We ended up doing different ones, larger ones where people weren’t so much affected by the recession in well-established residential properties, in Kensington and north London,” he said.

Permit applications for this type of work have soared: in 2013, Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall received 450 compared to just 20 a decade ago.

“We’re talking about two or three floors down and extending beyond the boundaries of the garden. It can sometimes go under the road,” complained Murad Qureshi, a Labour member of the London Assembly, the elected body that holds the London mayor to account.

Often the new spaces house luxurious marble swimming pools, home theatres or garages for classic cars.

View gallery

Developing basements allows residents to increase floorspace …

Developing basements allows residents to increase floorspace while sticking to strict planning restr …

“This is really the super-rich extending very large properties even further, ” Qureshi said, calling the properties “iceberg homes”.

Last year, Qureshi unsuccessfully tried to impose limits on such developments in the capital.

“A lot of local residents are very concerned about these extensive developments causing floods, sink holes, structural damage to neighbouring properties and the construction of these deep basements is very disruptive to the immediate neighbourhood,” he said.

– ‘Living in a building site’ –

The work can take several months, even years.

At the chic Orme Square in Westminster, a sewer recently collapsed. The road above had been carrying trucks laden with soil removed from the home of a famous English television presenter.

For two fed-up residents, who wished to remain anonymous, the link is clear.

 

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http://news.yahoo.com/londons-iceberg-homes-plumb-citys-depths-102322228.html

Real Estate Markets Tiptoe Toward Stability | North Salem Real Estate

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Freddie Mac’s proprietary MiMi index, which uses data on mortgage repayments and local economic conditions to track markets against their ‘long-term stable range”, reports that national MiMi value stands at 74.9, indicating a weak housing market overall but showing a slight improvement (+0.37%) from November to December and a positive 3-month trend of (+1.09%).

On a year-over-year basis, the U.S. housing market has improved (+4.41%). The nation’s all-time MiMi high of 121.7 was April 2006; its low was 57.2 in October 2010, when the housing market was at its weakest. Since that time, the housing market has made a 31 percent rebound.

The U.S. housing market continues to stabilize at the national level for the fourth consecutive month. Thirty-eight of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, and 40 of the 50 metros, are now showing an improving three month trend. Three additional metros entered their benchmarked stable ranges of housing activity including Buffalo, Boston and Nashville.

“Housing markets are getting back on track. The national MiMi improved for the fourth consecutive month. Nearly 80 percent of the state and metro housing markets MiMi tracks are improving or in their stable range of activity. We’ve even seen the MiMi purchase application indicator increase 0.07 percent on a year-over-year basis. Low mortgage rates and moderating house price growth are helping to keep payment-to-income ratios favorable for the typical family in most of the country. In fact, Los Angeles is the only metro market with an elevated MiMi payment-to-income indicator whereas most other markets remain quite affordable. And of course, labor markets are generally improving,” said Freddie Mac Deputy Chief Economist Len Kiefer.

 

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http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2015/02/real-estate-markets-tiptoe-toward-stability/

Mortgage Rates Up Again | North Salem Real Estate

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Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates moving higher amid a strong employment report. Regardless, fixed-rate mortgages rates still remain near their May 23, 2013 lows.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.76 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending February 19, 2015, up from last week when it averaged 3.69 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.33 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.05 percent with an average 0.6 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.99 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 3.35 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 2.97 percent this week with an average 0.5 point, unchanged from last week. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 3.08 percent.
  • 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.45 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.42 percent. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.57 percent.

Average commitment rates should be reported along with average fees and points to reflect the total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage. Visit the following links for theRegional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quotes
Attributed to Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist, Freddie Mac.

“Mortgage rates rose for the second consecutive week as 10-year Treasury yields surged. Housing starts declined 2 percent to a seasonally adjusted pace of 1.065 million units and housing permits dipped 0.7 percent in January. However, homebuilders remain confident about new home sales although slightly tempered from last month as the NAHB Housing Market Index slipped 2 points to 55 in February.”

Mortgage Rates Move Higher on Strong Jobs Report | North Salem Real Estate

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Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates moving higher amid a strong employment report. Regardless, fixed-rate mortgages rates still remain near their May 23, 2013 lows.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.69 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending February 12, 2015, up from last week when it averaged 3.59 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.28 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 2.99 percent with an average 0.6 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.92 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 3.33 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 2.97 percent this week with an average 0.5 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.82 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 3.05 percent.
  • 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.42 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.39 percent. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.55 percent.

Average commitment rates should be reported along with average fees and points to reflect the total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage. Visit the following links for theRegional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quotes
Attributed to Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist, Freddie Mac.

“Mortgage rates rose this week following strong economic data. The economy added 257,000 new jobs in January after robust increases of 329,000 in December and 423,000 in November. The unemployment rate edged up to 5.7 percent last month from 5.6 percent in December. Average hourly earnings rose 0.5 percent, following a 0.2 percent decline in December.