Tag Archives: Westchester Luxury Homes

Doors to single-property investing could be thrown open to all | Armonk Real Estate

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Sometimes, when you cover your ears to escape all the chatter about real estate crowdfunding, you may ask yourself, “What is the big deal?”

After all, crowdfunding is not new. Indeed, it’s ancient.

“At the end of the sermon, they’re passing the plate,” crowdfunding expert Sydney Armani said at a recent crowdfunding conference hosted by The Soho Loft, a financial adviser for crowdfunders.

Real estate finance is also no stranger to crowdfunding. For decades, intermediaries have aggregated and funneled money from investors to real estate companies that use the money to purchase or develop property.

But the fact is, the technology-fueled method of pooling money for real estate investments that has come to hog the label of “crowdfunding” iterates on its predecessors in a fashion that could transform real estate finance in a big way, particularly once the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fully implements new regulatory changes.

As a result, the differences between crowdfunding and its ancestral forms may be worth exploring. If you’re interested, they boil down to two words: access and transparency.

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/25/real-estate-crowdfunding-why-its-a-big-deal/#sthash.3q46y8J9.dpuf

Sustainable Cork Flooring: Elegant and Eco-Friendly | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Bamboo, sustainably harvested wood, and linoleum made from recycled content  are all eco-friendly hardwood flooring options. Also available at most major home  improvement stores, cork flooring is competitively priced with other kinds of  sustainable flooring, and cork is a beautiful, eco-friendly material.

Cork products are made from the bark of the cork oak tree (Quercus  suber). Much of the world’s cork comes from forests in Portugal, where the  trees’ drought resistance allows them to flourish. Harvesters cut and strip the  bark during early summer, a process that removes only the dead outer bark layers  while leaving the living cambium intact. The cork trees continue to grow  unharmed for about nine years before the bark gets harvested again.

Most of the Portuguese cork oak forests are owned by individual families who — when they’re not harvesting the oak trees’ bark — grow medicinal herbs,  produce honey, gather pine nuts, graze cattle, and raise prized Black Spanish  pigs on cork oak acorns in the forests.

Sustainable cork flooring is made by mixing an adhesive  with “waste” cork granules from bottle-stopper production. It’s available in a  range of finishes, from wood tones to tile look-alikes, and its natural  propensity to repel water and provide acoustic insulation are bonus qualities.  Keep your eyes peeled for other sustainable cork products as well, including  wall insulation that’s growing in popularity in Europe because of its natural  fire resistance and sound-proofing ability. If you’d like to learn about and  support sustainable cork harvesting, go to Amorim Cork, and choose wine with stoppers made of real  cork. Cheer

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/sustainable-cork-flooring-zm0z13djzsor.aspx#ixzz2lO15Bu7D

Realtors Now as Old as Congressmen | Old Bedford NY Realtor

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The median age of Realtors now is the same as the median age of members of the current US House of Representatives, according to the latest member profile from the National Association of Realtors.

Since 2007 the median age of Realtors has increased steadily, reaching 57 this year, the oldest on record. The 111th Congress, which took office in 2009, is the oldest in the nation’s history, with an average age of 57 in the House and 63 in the Senate.

Forty-one percent of Realtors are more than 60 years old, while only 2 percent are under 30 years old.  The incremental increase in age may be attributed to professionals staying in real estate longer and putting off retirement, NAR said.

 

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/11/realtors-now-as-old-as-congressmen/

Mortgage Delinquencies Dropped Nearly 25 Percent Since Last Year | Bedford Corners Homes

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The rate of borrowers 60 days or more delinquent on their mortgages dropped 23.3% in the past year, ending Q3 2013 at 4.09% from5.33% in Q3 2012of all homeowners with a mortgage according to Transunion, one of the nation’s top three credit bureaus.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia experienced a decline in their mortgage delinquency rates between Q3 2012 and Q3 2013. Five states — California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah — experienced 30%+ declines in their mortgage delinquency rate. Three states — California, Florida and Nevada — had double-digit percentage drops in the last quarter. Nationally the mortgage delinquency rate also dropped on a quarterly basis, down 5.3% from 4.32% in Q2 2013, the seventh straight quarterly decline.

The data provided are gathered from TransUnion’s proprietary Industry Insights Report, a quarterly overview summarizing data, trends and perspectives on the U.S. consumer lending industry. The report is based on anonymized credit data from virtually every credit-active consumer in the United States.

“This isn’t a sample data set,” said Tim Martin, group vice president of U.S Housing for TransUnion’s financial services business unit. “We looked at all 52 million installment-based mortgages in the U.S. and the trend is clear — the percentage of borrowers willing and able to make their mortgage payments continues to improve. The overall delinquency rate is still high relative to ‘normal,’ but a 23% year over year improvement is great news for homeowners and their lenders.”

TransUnion recorded 52.31 million mortgage accounts as of Q3 2013, down from 54.23 million in Q3 2012. This variable was as high as 63.14 million in Q3 2008 prior to the housing crisis.

Viewed one quarter in arrears (to ensure all accounts are included in the data), new account originations increased to 2.34 million in Q2 2013, up from 2.09 million in Q2 2012. This is a major increase from just two years ago when there were 1.32 million new account originations in Q2 2010.

“New mortgage originations showed good growth through the second quarter of this year, largely the result of increased refinance transactions driven by low rates and increasing home prices,” said Martin. “However, mortgage rates started to increase right around Memorial Day, and when the data come out next quarter, we expect it to show that new originations are decreasing as a result.”

 

 

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/11/mortgage-delinquencies-dropped-nearly-25-percent-since-last-year/

Declining Prices of U.S. Homebuilder Stocks an Indicator Something Not Right with Housing Market | Bedford NY Homes

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The direction of prices in the housing market has historically been dependent on the direction of mortgage interest rates. If mortgage rates start to increase, it makes homes less affordable for those who want to buy. The math is simple: the higher the mortgage interest rate, the higher the mortgage payment is going to be for the home owner and the more difficult it becomes to keep up with payments—something we learned in the housing market crash of 2007.

Mortgage interest rates are rising, and I believe the U.S. housing market will suffer as a result. Of course, interest rates are nowhere close to what they were in the 1980s, but they are up significantly this year from their lows. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate tracked by Freddie Mac stood at 4.19% this past October. In the same period a year ago, the rate was sitting at 3.38%. (Source: Freddie Mac web site, last accessed November 12, 2013.)

The effects of demand for housing given higher interest rates can be seen in the chart below. The number of new homes sold in the U.S. housing market has been declining since the beginning of the year.

Declining Prices of U.S. Homebuilder Stocks an Indicator Something Not Right with Housing Market image House Sold New One Family Chart1Declining Prices of U.S. Homebuilder Stocks an Indicator Something Not Right with Housing Market Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

In early 2013, the annual rate of new homes sold in the U.S. housing market was close to 460,000 units. This number came in at just 421,000 units in August, down eight percent.

The weakness in the housing market can be seen in the statistics being released by new home builders. For example, D.R. Horton, Inc. (NYSE/DHI), a large U.S. homebuilder, said that in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2013 (which ended on September 30) the cancellation rate (that’s the rate of home buyers canceling their purchase contracts) stood at 31%. (Source: D.R. Horton, Inc., November 12, 2013.) Last fiscal quarter, the company’s cancellation rate stood at 24%, and in the second fiscal quarter, it was 19%! The number of people walking away from deals at DR Horton is skyrocketing, and if we checked the rates of other homebuilders, I’m sure we’d see the same trend.

 

 

 

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/declining-prices-u-homebuilder-stocks-indicator-something-not-195035784.html

Monetize Your Social Media Campaigns With These Tech Tools | Mt Kisco Realtor

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Social media has become an even bigger part of consumers’ lives in the past year, making it clear what some once thought was a trend is likely here to stay. In fact, social media users are finding more innovative ways to interact, with videos and photos playing a greater part in the way people communicate with each other online.

Marketers are hard at work, as well, trying to find new ways to leverage the power of social networking to reach new customers. Fitting social media interaction time into busy schedules is an ongoing challenge for business owners, however, with Facebook and Twitter accounts often abandoned for days at a time as professionals deal with more pressing issues.

Fortunately, help is available. Numerous tech tools can help professionals manage social media accounts, even taking care of posts for them. But with so many tools on the market today, how can a professional possibly sort through them all? To help, I’ve put together a list of some of the best resources for managing, tracking, and getting the most out of your social media-based marketing campaigns.

“The only way to sort through all the tools out there is to do your own research and try them out. Many tools have a free 30 day free trial so you can feel comfortable with what you’re getting” Anne Ward, CEO of CircleClick said in a recent interview.

Klout for Business

“Influence” has become an important word in the world of marketing, with businesses having rapidly realized the reach of those who have large online followings. Klout for Business helps businesses identify influencers in their own social media circles to allow them to reach out to those individuals to spread their message. Using “Perks,” businesses can offer trial versions of products to top influencers in exchange for a mention on their high-traffic sites, allowing those businesses to reach a large number of social media users at once.

Rowfeeder

With Rowfeeder, businesses can gain insight into topics that are trending, including topics that concern their own industry. This analysis can be used to tweak your own campaigns, allowing you to reach out to consumers using the terms that interest them. In other words, you can include the terms in your campaign that are most likely to be searched, driving customers directly to your posts. It also can be used to track your own campaigns by following a particular hashtag and delivering data about activity on that hashtag. How many times was it re-tweeted? How many followers did each re-tweeter have?

Mention

This alert program monitors a user’s social media accounts and sends notifications when a specified search term receives a mention. Mention searches posts in 42 different languages, delivering those back to give businesses a global view of a message’s reach. Social media interactions can also be conducted directly through the Mention interface for added convenience.

MediaFunnel

MediaFunnel is ideal for organizations interested in involving multiple team members in managing and monitoring accounts. Posts can be deployed across multiple social media platforms at once, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, and LinkedIn. Items can be set up to post at specified intervals, allowing businesses to choose the best time of day to reach their individual customer base.

HootSuite

Popular social media dashboard service HootSuite integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ Pages, Foursquare, WordPress, Mixi, and almost every other service available through its supplemental App Directory. Users can schedule posts and monitor activity, as well as pull reports to identify the performance of campaigns. Through an app, users can manage social media accounts on the go.

Chirpify

Imagine if you could sell event tickets or gather entries for a contest directly on Twitter. Chirpify gives promoters that capability, allowing them to connect an account that is then assigned a specific hashtag. Customers Tweet using a hashtag (#entertowin, #partytickets2014) and the information is captured by Chirpify, who processes the payment or logs the entry for the business.

Triberr

One of the best ways to grow your audience is to interact with others. Triberr connects you with people who are interested in the same topic you are, separating topics into “Tribes” to better help you find blogs that relate to your own interests. You can gather social media followers on Triberr, since you’ll be regularly interacting with others who share your interests.

Shortstack

Shortstack helps businesses create professional-looking Facebook pages, complete with polls, forms, and more. The service provides more than 60 templates and 70 themes to let small businesses find the look that fits their own unique style. For pages with less than 2,000 likes, the service is completely free, with the price increasing as a page gains more fans.

Infogr.am

Infographics are a great way to connect with today’s visually-driven social media audiences. Infogr.am is a tool that helps businesses put together infographics that convey a message for free. Businesses can import existing spreadsheets or create new ones in order to populate pie charts and bar graphs. Once an infographic has been created, it can be downloaded or shared to social media sites directly from the site.

Feedly

One way to keep social media audiences interested is to repost news that is relevant to your industry. Feedly provides a way to keep up with what’s going on in the world, with information delivered in one compact dashboard. These links can then be shared to Twitter directly from the app. Feedly is also a way to keep up with information your social media contacts recommend to better keep you informed.

VideoRascal

In case you haven’t noticed, animated explainer videos are all the rage. In just a short snippet, you can create a fun explanation of what your business does. Visitors to your website, looking for a quick description of your product or service, will be intrigued by the animated characters and you’ll save the money you would have had to spend hiring a camera crew to record you talking about your service. VideoRascal promises a video for less than $99, using the templates the site provides. You then add a script, record a voiceover, and choose the music you want to go with the video. Once complete, you can export the video for use on your website and social media sites.

Social media remains a vital part of business marketing. Using these helpful tools, businesses can maintain and manage their social media accounts while still remaining on budget.

 

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhendricks/2013/11/13/monetize-your-social-media-campaigns-with-these-tech-tools/

Overcoming job stress: Don’t discount the power of positive thinking, superstition | Pound Ridge Realtor

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Have you ever had a particularly bad day, week or month that left you feeling like the mole in the “Whac-a-Mole” game?

As a Realtor, someone is always taking a swat at you or your business; what can you do to cope? Recently I had a conversation about the impending changes coming in January with respect to the qualified residential mortgage, as well as how the “Obamacare” health insurance cancellations and premium increases may impact the real estate market.

As we were discussing how these uncertainties could put the brakes on the real estate market, it struck me that the “Whac-a-Mole” game was the perfect metaphor to describe what Realtors experience on a day-in, day-out basis.

Realtors are constantly being “whacked” by unrealistic sellers; buyers who work with them and then buy from a different agent; tight credit; low appraisals; and a host of other transaction-related issues.

Moreover, federal, state and local regulations (the qualified residential mortgage is a great example) often create such high degrees of uncertainty that even the experts are uncertain about what’s coming and what real estate professionals must do in order to comply.

Now couple this with the normal day-to-day stresses such as family issues, money woes and traffic, plus the never-ending onslaught of text messages, Facebook notifications and other digital distractions, and it’s no wonder that so many agents are feeling battered about as if they’re the mole in the “Whac-a-Mole” game.

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/21/overcoming-job-stress-dont-discount-the-power-of-positive-thinking-superstition/#sthash.UY1PuFGS.dpuf

Viber, Splitwise among cross-platform apps that provide structure to real estate partnerships | Bedford Corners Homes

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Although we are similar in many ways, my business partner and I tend to disagree when it comes to technology. I’m an Apple gal to my core (no pun intended), and Kate is an Android fan.

Earlier this year when we were both looking at buying new phones, I fought for her to get an iPhone, as I thought collaboration between the two of us would be easier if we both used the iOS system.

But being as stubborn as we both are, she ended up with a Samsung Galaxy S4 and I upgraded to the iPhone 5. After some research we found there are actually many apps and programs that work extremely well cross-platform.

Here are some of the ones we use to help us stay synced and always up-to-date with our business: Contact management: Ixact Contact We tried other contact management programs, but this is by far the most simple, yet powerful, one that we’ve tried.

At $34.95 per month, it’s not cheap, but it’s a huge time-saver.

We are able to easily sync contacts, reminders and appointments from our Android and iOS devices to Ixact. If Kate books an appointment with a client, on her phone or through the Ixact dashboard, it is automatically synced to my phone and vice versa.

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/viber-splitwise-among-cross-platform-apps-that-provide-structure-to-real-estate-partnerships/#sthash.858Iag78.dpuf

China’s penchant for property evokes US bubble mentality | Armonk NY Homes

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Amid the government’s effort to pass aggressive legislation designed to cool the housing market, China’s home prices soared to record heights in October, underscoring the persistent danger of a price bubble, Reuters reports.

China’s booming market is reminiscent of the U.S. bubble, since it is driven in large part the view that property is one of the soundest investments. The government has said it intends to pass legislation aimed at curbing a possible bubble as part of what Reuters called its “boldest set of economic and social reforms in nearly three decades.”

 

 

 

Source: Reuters