Tag Archives: Pound Ridge Luxury Homes

Mortgage Loan Rates Dip as Home Sales Stabilize | Pound Ridge NY Homes

 

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly report on mortgage applications Wednesday morning, noting a decrease of 0.2% in the group’s seasonally adjusted composite index, following a rise of 4.7% for the previous week. Mortgage loan rates decreased last week on three of four loan types to their lowest levels since late November.

The seasonally adjusted purchase index increased by 2% from the prior week’s report. On an unadjusted basis, the composite index decreased by 9% week-over-week. The unadjusted purchase index decreased by 3% for the week and is 12% lower year-over-year.

Mortgage rates continue to inch downward, with only the 5/1 ARM interest rate adding three basis points last week. Adjustable rate mortgage loans account for 7% of all applications.

The MBA’s refinance index decreased by 2%, after rising by 10% in the previous week. The share of refinancings fell by two points, totaling 62% of all applications.

The average mortgage loan rate for a conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage decreased from 4.57% to 4.52%. The rate for a jumbo 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell from 4.57% to 4.47%. The average interest rate for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell from 3.68% to 3.59%.

The contract interest rate for a 5/1 adjustable rate mortgage loan rose from 3.23% to 3.25%.

Sales have held fairly stable in January after an initial recovery, which is good news for sellers. As inventories increase with better weather, buyers should get a break too.

 

http://247wallst.com/housing/2014/01/29/mortgage-loan-rates-dip-as-home-sales-stabilize/

 

The Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges: First Look | Pound Ridge Real Estate

 

The first answer is yes. You should go to the Inn at Pound Ridge by Jean-Georges. That is, if you can get in. A reservation at the restaurant, owned by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, is the hottest ticket in Westchester since Blue Hill at Stone Barns opened in 2004.

lj012214inn24 The downstairs dining room, which was not open the evening I went, but all lit with beautiful candles anyway.

The second answer: very good. The food is beautifully presented, and the flavors shine with signature Jean-Georges magic: a little heat, a little sweet, a little acidity, a little umami. The chef is Blake Farrar, who formerly cooked in Jean-Georges’ restaurant The Mark in Manhattan.

lj012214inn25 Booths downstairs.

The third answer: gorgeous. The renovations of the building, a former inn and restaurant dating from 1833, will leave you slack-jawed. A big white-brick fireplace is the centerpiece of the dining room. The decor is mid-century-modern (elegant wood tables and chairs), vintage (mismatched silver and linens) and farmhouse chic (reclaimed barn wood, exposed beams), all rolled into one.

lj012214inn26 A fireplace downstairs.

The fourth answer: it won’t break the bank — unless you want it to. Entrees range from $25 to $38. If you’re there for a celebration, you can spend $300 on a bottle of wine. If you’re there on a Tuesday, you can get an appetizer and a pizza and be out of there for under $50.

lj012214inn31 The busy dining room upstairs.

Food writer Megan McCaffrey and I had a reservation for opening night, but because of the snowstorm, we decided to change it to Wednesday. It meant we missed Martha Stewart and Richard Gere, but lucked in to a sighting of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively.

It also means the restaurant had one more day to work out kinks. Besides a little technical difficulty with the check at the bar and the extra salt on our fries, we didn’t notice many.

Because we changed our reservation at the last minute, we could only get in at 5 p.m. (I think I was the first customer at the restaurant!) We ordered drinks at the bar while the staff scurried around, getting the dining room ready for the evening.

lj012214inn01 My Manhattan.

The bar is small — about 10 seats — and there are 10 or so tables in the lounge alongside it.

lj012214inn02 Tables in the lounge.

The lounge and dining room are separated by a banquette (for both). The dining room has a soaring ceiling, but feels cozy nonetheless.

lj012214inn10

This is not a review, just our first impressions of a restaurant on its second night open to the public. But here’s a look at the food. It was all terrific, though a couple of dishes were heavy handed on the salt.

Our first dish was the Peekytoe Crab Crostini with Garlic Aioli ($14). It came on a rye toast, considerately cut into four pieces, which made it easy to share. Sweet and buttery, and just as good as when I had it at ABC Kitchen.

 

 

http://food.lohudblogs.com/2014/01/27/inn-pound-ridge-jean-georges-first-look/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Rise Most Since February 2006 | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate

 

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities rose in November from a year ago by the most in almost eight years, providing a boost to household wealth.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property prices in 20 cities climbed 13.7 percent from November 2012, the biggest 12-month gain since February 2006, after a 13.6 percent increase in the year ended in October, a report from the group showed today in New York. The median projection of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 13.8 percent advance.

A limited number of available properties is helping to sustain home price appreciation even as higher mortgage rates cool demand and leave purchases out of reach for some Americans. Further strides in the housing market this year would be made easier by a pickup in job and income growth.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-28/home-prices-in-20-u-s-cities-rise-by-most-in-almost-eight-years.html

At $130M, Nation’s ‘Priciest’ Manse is No Longer the Priciest | Pound Ridge NY Homes

 

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Copper Beech Farm, the 50-acre Greenwich estate that roared onto the market last May with a record-setting $190M price tag, has been mercilessly slashed, first down to $140M and now again down to $130M. At 68 percent of its original ask, the property is no longer home to the priciest mega-mansion in the country, having ceded the throne to Dallas’ Crespi-Hicks estate, which is still holding strong at $135M. (Jackson Land and Cattle, a 1,750-acre estate in Jackson Hole, Wyo., has been asking $175M for a while, but there several homes on that ranch and most people would consider it a working farm with investment potential instead of, say, a single-family home.)

But, please, back to the blockbuster home at hand. Owned by timber mogul John Rudey, the property is stocked with a 12-bedroom mansion, a whopping 4,000—yes, four thousand—feet of water frontage, and not one, but two offshore islands. Rudey originally told the Journal that he was selling the spread, which he bought 31 years ago, because his kids had grown, but that may have been only half of the truth. According to a followup piece in the Times, Rudey’s timber holdings have been decimated by transportation issues, endangered species conservation, water limitations, and the spruce budworm, a tree-burrowing insect. These setbacks might not have impacted the Copper Beech Farm property at all had Rudey not used the sprawling waterfront estate as collateral on a series of huge loans. At one time, according to the Times, the debt attached to the property totaled a whopping $203M. (After the 2006 collapse of one of Rudey’s timber holding companies, the banks came calling. In 2011, Bank of America began foreclosure proceedings on a portion of Copper Beech Farm. The bank later backed off, but Rudey may have been forced to sell off much of his remaining timber holdings, and his $16.5M Fifth Avenue apartment, to keep creditors at bay.)

 

 

http://curbed.com/archives/2014/01/22/at-130m-nations-priciest-manse-is-no-longer-the-priciest.php

Perfectly Staged Florida Bayfront Mansion Asks $16.9M | Pound Ridge NY Homes

 

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Location: Osprey, Fla. Price: $16,900,000 The Skinny: Consider, for a moment, the staged perfection of listing photos: coming home to a house that’s been meticulously polished to its Platonic ideal as this one has must be like arriving at your front door only to find that your grandmother’s front sitting room, with its strictly off–limits knick-knacks and vacuum-sealed sofas, is now every room in your house. Do you dare muss the taut bedclothes, or move the towel that’s so artfully draped over the edge of your tub (as if someone just happened to casually lay it down in the most picturesque way possible)? Is it permissible to flop down in your favorite easy chair, or will your weight irreparably deform its perfectly fluffed, better-than-new, cushions? And as for making a crumbly peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the sterile operating theater standing in for the kitchen—well, no. All chin-stroking aside, this four-bedroom, eight-bathroom bayfront home, which the listing thoughtfully assures us is “architect-designed”, is asking $16.9M.

 

 

http://curbed.com/archives/2014/01/15/perfectly-staged-florida-bayfront-mansion-asks-169m.php

5 Twitter Marketing Tactics | Pound Ridge NY Realtor

 

5 Twitter Marketing Tactics for Building a Fanatical Following

If there’s one group that’s well-versed in developing large and loyal  audiences on Twitter, it’s bloggers. They do, after all, have a content strategy  built into their title — ahem blogging — which means that even when  they’re promoting their personal brand, it’s more likely to be with content that  their followers find helpful or otherwise more interesting than, say, a random  company selling bar soap.

Bloggers who want to be successful have a kind of urgency to directly engage  with, build and look after their following, as there’s really no better way to  attract visitors to their sites. (Can you imagine a blogger running a TV  campaign ad, particularly before they’ve had any measure of success? Yeah,  no).

But of course, not all bloggers have thousands of followers, so, what  separates the superstars from those that hover indefinitely in the middle of the  pack?

Let’s take a look at a few bloggers and their Twitter marketing tactics who  really knock it out of the park to see if we can’t glean a lesson or two.

1. Get targeted

Twitter is a pretty reciprocal place, so you could hop onto the  platform every night and just randomly add people, and in the morning you’d have  a fair amount of people following in return. But having a mass of followers doesn’t mean much if they’re not  engaged, and if one new follower is all about muscle cars while the next is  all about creative applications for doilies, you’re going to have quite the time  appealing to all of them. And if they’re not engaged, they’re certainly not  going to share your work and help you grow your following.

One great example of someone who does this kind of singular focus right is  Heidi Swanson of 101  Cookbooks. Originally started as a way to share her many recipes with her  friends, Swanson’s site features a wealth of healthy recipes and is also home to  her cookbooks, which have a “supernatural” focus.

Clearly, Swanson is targeting not just cooks but also those with a crunchier  bent. You can see this hyper-focus on her Twitter feed:

5 Twitter Marketing Tactics for Building a Fanatical Following

While Swanson does do some retweeting of causes close to her heart and  recipes from likeminded sites, the majority of her tweets are links to her  content, prefaced with a listing of ingredients. This fits well with the  mentality of Swanson’s site, which allows users to search for recipes based on  ingredients, and it does what it needs to do simply before getting out of the  way. This is just what her avid audience, on the hunt for seasonal recipes, is  looking for.

What This Means for You As a rule of thumb, keep in mind that it’s  better to be hyper targeted than too broad; you can always expand from your base  once you get going. While you may not need to get as targeted as this, having some kind of theme is crucial — all the better if you can turn that into  a hook, a la @shitmydadsays. In fact, sometimes just getting a great Twitter  handle can frame all of your activities. Once you have that, get as creative as  possible within those confines.

Who can you follow that clearly shares your interests? What kind of content  can you retweet? How can you mix up the content? Give your followers not just  information but actionable insights, and you’re sure to grow.

2. Help each other

Call it guest posting, call it co-branding, call it coasting on each other’s  tail winds — whatever. There are few strategies quite as effective for growing  your following than teaming up with or regularly giving press to another blogger  or business. Teaming up with someone else not only gives you great material for  your Twitter feed (and who couldn’t use a little bit more meat to feed the  social-content beast?) but it also exposes your work to a much wider audience.  And while not everyone in that audience will be primed to follow you, if you’ve  done a good job of picking a partner whose interests parallel your own, you  should gain a sizable chunk.

Blogger DIY Victoria E. Barnes, who focuses on renovations of her Victorian  home, does this in a number of ways. Sometimes, it’s as simple as retweeting a  fellow blogger’s contest:

5 Twitter Marketing Tactics for Building a Fanatical Following

Sometimes it means riffing on popular culture, a la this Mad Men Spoof:

5 Twitter Marketing Tactics for Building a Fanatical Following 3

Whether it’s directly teaming up with someone or just a playful tease, being  in on it with someone else is a great way to gain exposure

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/01/16/5-twitter-marketing-tactics-for-building-a-fanatical-following/#C6SjYvwkFbaEvxKh.99