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Should I Update the Flooring in My Entry Hall? | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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Q. The floors in our home are mostly hardwood except for the entry hall, which is dated tile. Is it worth replacing?

A. “If you and your broker notice it as a flaw and something that needs to be updated, you can be sure the buyer will, too,” said Aimee Scher, a real estate sales representative at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Manhattan. So in most cases, she said, it is probably a good idea to replace the tile.

But you should consider the condition of the rest of the home, and your asking price. If other parts of your home require work, and you plan to set the asking price below similar properties, it may make sense to leave it as is.

“Some people would be willing to buy it with that flaw,” Ms. Scher said, “and then rip it out and replace it themselves.”

If the rest of your home is in pristine condition, though, and you plan to set your asking price at the high end of the range for similar properties, you should deal with the problem.

Ms. Scher said, “A $10,000 fix that might add $30,000 or $40,000 to your purchase price is something worth doing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/garden/should-i-update-the-flooring-in-my-entry-hall.html?hpw&rref=garden

Housing Outlook 2014: 10 Predictions From The Experts | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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In 2013, the housing recovery was a welcome bright spot for the economy: prices were shooting up, fewer homeowners were underwater, and builder confidence was finally on the upswing. It’s looking like 2014 should be another good year for housing–mostly. Here are ten things housing experts expect to see in 2014:

1. More homes will be available Short supply drove rapid price increases at the beginning of 2013, but watch for that to change next year. Realtor.org notes that the inventory (homes available for purchase) shortage began to soften in February. New construction and rising prices should bring more homes, both new and old, on to the market in 2014, helping inventory return to traditional levels.

2. Mortgage rates will rise Zillow Z +4.86% predicts rates will hit 5% by the end of 2014–well up from the 4′s and 3′s of late, but still well within normal levels. New Fed Reserve chief Janet Yellen is expected to continue Ben Bernanke’s policy of keeping mortgage rates low by buying blocks of mortgage-backed securities, but the Fed’s bond-buying taper could push rates higher. “While this will make homes more expensive to finance – the monthly payment on a $200,000 loan will rise by roughly $160 – it’s important to remember that mortgage rates in the 5 percent range are still very low,” says Erin Lantz, Zillow’s director of mortgages. Really. “Prior to the Federal Reserve’s 2008 decision to buy $85 billion in debt per month, the 36-year average was 9.2%, and never below 5.8%,” notes Glen Kelman, CEO of Redfin.

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Zillow: National mortgage rates, 30-year, fixed-rate

3. Mortgages will be easier to get “The silver lining to rising interest rates is that getting a loan will be easier,” says Lantz. “Rising rates means lenders’ refinance business will dwindle, forcing them to compete for buyers by potentially loosening their lending standards.”

4. Home prices will rise 3% Redfin and Zillow are predicting that home prices will rise between 3% and 5% in 2014. For comparison’s sake, 2013 saw jumps of 5% nationally, with increases of more than 20% in some hot spots. “These gains, while beneficial in many ways, were also unsustainable and well above historic norms for healthy, balanced markets,” says Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist. “This year, home value gains will slow down significantly because of higher mortgage rates, more expensive home prices, and more supply created by fewer underwater homeowners and more new construction.”

5. Fewer homeowners will be underwater Rising prices helped 2.5 million homeowners with underwater mortgages regain positive equity status during the second quarter of 2013, according to Realtor.org. By Q3, a CoreLogic report found that about 6.4 million homes were still in negative equity at the end of Q3. Watch for that number to shrink in 2014.

 

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2013/12/23/housing-outlook-2014-10-predictions-from-the-experts/?partner=yahootix

 

New Jersey home prices dip in October | Waccabuc Real Estate

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Home prices in New Jersey remained stagnant between September and October, reflecting a nationwide cooling down-period for the real estate market, according to a monthly Home Price Index report from CoreLogic, a real estate analytic firm.
The average price of a single-family home in New Jersey fell by 0.33 percent month-to-month. In the Newark region, one of the statistical areas studied by CoreLogic, prices slipped by 0.74 percent. Atlantic City and the Jersey City-New York-White Plains area saw gains of 0.19 percent and 1.21 percent respectively. Camden and Trenton saw declines of 0.66 percent and 0.27 percent.
Nationally, prices increased 0.2 percent.

Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in a statement that the “monthly growth rate is expected to moderate even further in November and December.”

CoreLogic president and chief executive officer Anand Nallathambi said “the housing market appears to be catching its breath.”

 

 

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2013/12/new_jersey_home_prices_dip_in.html

If prospective buyers can’t picture living in a particular home, they’ll walk away | Waccabuc Real Estate

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While showing homes to a young couple with two small children I discovered a house can look too perfect. Since I just met the buyers as they had arrived in town, I didn’t have much time to schedule appointments and make my showing schedule. Some of the sellers had only a couple hours’ notice to prepare for the showings. Even with the short notice, these sellers have extremely neat homes. There was not one child’s toy left out, or book, dish, wrinkled pillow or toothbrush out of place.

The buyers kept commenting about how neat these homes were and even questioned if these occupied homes had real people living there. The houses looked too perfect. I know for a fact that one of the homes was professionally staged because the listing agent always requires her sellers to stage their homes. Some of the other houses may or may not have been professionally staged.

Staging — when done right — can help a home sell. I have seen some wonderful staging jobs. But a couple of these homes lacked that warm, lived-in feeling. This turned off the young couple with the two small children. I saw them squirm and cross their arms. They made generic statements about how this is nice and that looks pretty, but not buying-sign comments.

We saw some vacant homes and some new construction, too. Seeing these homes empty did not seem to bother the buyers, as they could see the real potential the homes offered — a clean palette, so to speak.

I showed another home that was occupied where the sellers left it neat but with a lived-in feeling. You could feel it the moment you stepped in the door. The buyers responded very favorably and started seeing themselves living there. They wanted to linger and ask questions. Yes, there were some personal family photos around, toys in the corner, things on the kitchen counter. The beds were made and the house was clean, but it felt lived in by a happy family.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/when-marketing-to-families-a-staged-listing-should-evoke-lived-in-feeling/#sthash.IdbSlOrt.dpuf

Most Popular Manhattan Rental Listings Of The Last Week | Waccabuc Real Estate

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Yesterday we rounded up the top 10 most expensive rental listings in the city, but those places aren’t exactly where most of the city’s renters are looking. So today, we are looking at the top 10 most popular Manhattan rental listings of the past week, according to data from StreetEasy. The listings, which were sorted by the number of pageviews, highlight that everyone is always searching for the best deal—the most expensive unit on this list is a $3,000/month two-bedroom.

↑10) 32 East 7th Street, East Village The listing for this two-bedroom makes no mention of a living room, and judging by the photos, there may not be one. The kitchen is small, and one of the bedrooms is a super weird shape, but it’s just $2,350.

↑ 9) 402 East 78th Street, Upper East Side A no-fee 1BR/1BA near First Avenue is listed for $1,895, and the photos looks pretty great, but the place has been sitting on the market for more than two months. The price was also recently reduced by $155, and there’s a free month of rent, so it seems like there’s something wrong with the place that’s not evident in the listing.

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↑ 8) 226 West 16th Street, Chelsea There are no photos of this 600-square-foot 1BR apartment, which is never a good sign, but the price, $1,995, has obviously attracted attention. The listing says the unit is rent-stabilized and has a full kitchen, but it also says the rent is $2266.52.

↑ 7) 322 West 11th Street, West Village Possibly the nicest unit on this list is this 2BR/1BA asking $3,000 per month. The kitchen is small, but there are high ceilings and both bedrooms can fit a queen-sized bed.

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↑ 6) 551 West 165th Street, Washington Heights For just $925/month, there’s a furnished studio next to the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. The brokerbabble describes the building as “immaculate, secure and very safe,” but the place looks like a hotel room in the photos.

↑ 5) 10 Jones Street, West Village If this listing for a $2,200/month one-bedroom in the West Village seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. It’s actually just for a bedroom in a 2BR/1BA duplex apartment that has 16′ ceilings and exposed brick walls. The photos were taken at nighttime, which always makes apartments, no matter how nice they are, look like a scene from a horror movie.

↑ 4) 251 West 15th Street, Chelsea Between 7th and 8th Avenues, there’s a small duplex asking $1,680/month. The kitchen is teeny, with a half-sized refrigerator, and the sleeping loft looks like it’s only about 4-feet high.

 

 

 

 

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/11/20/the_most_popular_manhattan_rental_listings_of_the_last_week.php

Metro Detroit Real Estate Market Stays Red Hot | Waccabuc Real Estate

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When it comes to housing in metro Detroit, it’s once again a seller’s market.

New figures from the Farmington Hills real estate data firm Realcomp II Ltd. show home prices skyrocketed 40 percent in October from a year earlier. Sales were up only slightly, though, at an 0.7 percent increase.

The median sale price in the 10-county area surveyed by Realcomp was $124,800, up from $89,000 a year earlier. A total of 6,345 homes changed hands in the month, up from 6,298 in October 2012.

Big price increases were reported in Macomb County (up 46 percent) and Wayne County (up 44 percent). Prices in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights were up 41 percent. Areas reporting relatively modest price increases were Livingston County (up 14.5 percent) and Lapeer County (up 6.1 percent). Average prices actually fell in only one county, 2.2 percent in St. Clair.

The number of homes sold actually fell in some parts of the region — down 20.1 percent in St. Clair County, down 10.2 percent in Lapeer County, down 9.6 percent in Detroit and the cities of Hamtramck, Highland Park and Harper Woods.

That could actually be because of a lack of inventory — the number of homes on the market fell almost 11 percent from a year ago, to 22,309 homes listed for sale in the region, down from 25,035 a year earlier. Another sign of a hot market: The number of days a home stayed on the market before selling plunged 22 days from a eyar earlier, to 56 days, from 78. (During the depths of the recession it took over 100 days to sell a home.)

 

 

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/11/12/metro-detroit-real-estate-market-stays-red-hot/

Is This the Top Content Marketing Company in the World? | Waccabuc Realtor

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The rise of blogging , Facebook and Twitter has made us all publishers.

Add mobile HD cameras mounted to helmets streaming death defying leaps,  extreme bike moves and dives and you have an explosion of multi-media creators  and publishers. Mobile and modern camera technology coupled with global social  networks are providing platforms and networks with the media fodder that are  supercharging content distribution and sharing.

Content and media is no longer gathering dust in the bottom draw or the  filing cabinet but is published online. Often it is streaming and unedited. It’s  real and raw.

Content now comes in a wide variety of formats and media. It can start with a  140 character micro blog (tweet), a video. image or a long form content piece of  2,000 words on your blog. It can even be a 6 second “Vine” video or a filtered  snapshot on Instagram taken on a smartphone.

These fast changing opportunities and mediums are presenting the traditional  marketer with some thought provoking and uncomfortable choices. You can almost  hear the squirming.

Why content marketing upsets traditional marketers

The old school marketing habits and paradigms don’t cut it anymore because  content marketing requires a different way of thinking. It flips the marketing  model in many ways.

  1. Pull rather than push. Its about attracting the customer to  you rather than pushing advertisements. That’s different.
  2. Entertain and educate first and sell second. Traditional  marketing never heard of the term educate.
  3. You don’t talk  about your product. Mentioning your product in content marketing  is inappropriate. The old school thinking struggles with that.
  4. You must think and act like a publisher not an advertiser.  That is not in the comfort zone.
  5. You operate in real time. This means you have to be  thinking about “continuous marketing” as well as being campaign focused. That’s  demanding.
  6. Need different  resources. This includes staff and software. The status quo is  being challenged.
  7. Needs a different culture. Publishing culture is different  to an advertising mindset. Newsrooms, reporting and editing are a world apart  from corporate marketing and advertising.

These mind warps are presenting some challenges and potential disruption to  the marketing department and the CEO. What are the obstacles in moving from  traditional mass media habits to a publisher paradigm?

The challenges to becoming a media company

The challenges come from many angles. Some are larger than others. It means  adopting a flexible mindset that is open to change. That in itself is a  challenge.

Here are a few to keep in mind as you move to a content marketing culture  that  embraces the new.

  • Re-allocation of  resources. It is hard to discard old habits but it requires a hard look  at what isn’t working or appropriate and try something new.
  • Re-educating the  team. It will mean sometimes forgetting what was taught at university  or college because most of the changes in media are mostly less than a decade  old. YouTube is not yet 10 years old (founded in 2005), tablets have only been  around for 4 years and Facebook was launched in February 2004.
  • Changing the culture. Maybe change management is  needed.
  • Adapting to a mobile content world. Smartphones only  exploded into popular culture when the first iPhone was launched in 2007.  Websites need upgrading to be “mobile responsive” and content optimisation now  has to consider viewing on smartphones.
  • Understanding  re-purposing of content. With the broad range of multi-media formats  (30 plus at last count) and social networks, brands need to understand that we  have different  preferences for the media we read and watch and the social  networks we use to consume them on. Same message but different  media.
  • Developing an integrated mindset. This means weaving  content marketing into other marketing channels. This includes embedding content  marketing in and across all media channels including social, search, email and  traditional mass media.
  • Creating “conversations around the brand” not about the  brand. (Thanks Altimeter for that insightful phrase). This means creating content that has heart and  soul of the brand embedded but not mentioned.

So what does this adaptation look like?

The content marketing stages

Content marketing is still embryonic for most companies. Here is how  Altimeter sees the stages of content marketing maturity.

 

 

 

 

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/11/08/is-this-the-top-content-marketing-company-in-the-world/#5eVc09uyx9ypi8ic.99