| North Salem NY Real Estate Report | RobReportBlog | ||
| 2013 | 6 months ending 11/25 | 2012 | |
| 28 | Sales | 20 | up 40% |
| $601,250.00 | median sold price | $537,000.00 | up 12% |
| $200,000.00 | low sold price | $330,000.00 | |
| $14,902,000.00 | high sold price | $1,662,500.00 | |
| 3539 | average size | 3106 | |
| $263.00 | ave. price per foot | $218.00 | |
| 207 | ave days on market | 248 | |
| $1,179,571.00 | average sold price | $696,320.00 | |
| 96.03% | ave sold to ask | 94.29% | |
Prospective homebuyers hoping to buy a home in the next four months say the lack of inventory is their biggest challenge, but many believe winter is a good time to buy because sellers are motivated to sell and more willing to negotiate.
That’s according to a survey of more than 1,300 visitors to realtor.com conducted from Nov. 7-16, which found 45 percent of buyers in the market said there’s not enough inventory in their price range.
The survey also found that a surprising number of prospective homebuyers — 19 percent — are planning to do all-cash deals.
Of those planning to buy without taking out a mortgage: 29 percent said they are downsizing to a smaller or less expensive home. 26 percent are relocation buyers. 11 percent are moving up to a bigger or more expensive home. 11 percent are buying a vacation home.
But most of those surveyed said they’ll need a mortgage to finance their home purchase.
Among that group, most did not have the 20 percent down payment that would allow them to qualify them for a conventional loan backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac without having to also purchase mortgage insurance.
More than 1 in 10 of those surveyed (13 percent) said they were planning to put just 3.5 percent down (the minimum down payment on FHA-guaranteed loans). Only 22 percent said they’d be able to make a down payment of more than 20 percent, which would allow them to avoid purchasing mortgage insurance.
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/20/despite-inventory-shortages-homebuyers-looking-for-bargains-this-winter/#sthash.r748HRyT.dpuf
Architectural Digest has long been a shiny toy filled with beautiful things, from eclectic Hamptons “farm” houses and slick fashion-y penthouses to Spanish villas overhauled by presidential decorators and Italian castles overhauled by, well, Martyn Lawrence Bullard. All exemplary interior design jobs, all rich people’s renovations projects. For the rest of us, though, the magazine features can very well be read like a primer in how to get sued by one’s landlord—unless, of course, one’s landlord is cool with “tearing down that bitch of a bearing wall” or “completely reconstructing every wall.” Below, a lesson in what not to do with a rental home, courtesy of Arch Digest:
Photo by Thomas Loof/Architectural Digest
13. ↑ “In the face of runaway extravagance, she addresses her designer’s concern over a blocked view with an imperious directive: ‘Tear down that bitch of a bearing wall and put a window where it ought to be!’ [Link]
12. Despite the potential nightmare of redistributing the column’s load, his response was categorical: Take it down.” [Link]
11. “Sheltered beneath a vibrantly gabled slate roof, the home has the same footprint as the original, but the amount of living space was dramatically expanded after the interior was reconfigured.” [Link]
10. “Ceilings were raised to ten and a half feet, as Candice requested, revealing awkwardly placed structural beams that Reger cleverly blended into handsomely configured coffers. Doors were heightened and aligned with windows, so natural light could flow deep into the rooms.” [Link]
9. “She jettisoned the living room’s 18th-century-style marble mantel in favor of a custom-made limestone replacement with an Art Moderne profile.” [Link]
8. “Len handled all of the architecture, completely reconstructing every wall and customizing every surface. Most dramatically, he dismantled the exterior walls and inserted a series of nine pairs of steel-framed glass doors that reveal the sweeping skyline and bring a metropolitan immediacy into the apartment.” [Link]
7. “By relocating the openings between rooms, circulation was enhanced.” [Link]
Photo by Luke White/Architectural Digest
6. ↑ “The designers brightened this once-gloomy space by ripping out dark paneling, painting the walls white, and installing a splendid light fixture that runs the length of the room.” [Link]
5. “Upstairs, Sultana and Croft had the task of converting two palatial salons into snug bedrooms. Their solution was to construct enclosed chambers inside each space—rooms within rooms. In the master suite, they broke up the wide expanse by building a capsule containing a bathroom in the area behind the bed.” [Link]
Photo by Scott Frances/Architectural Digest
4. ↑ “One segment of the glass wall is an immense 18 feet long by 9.5 feet tall. ‘It arrived from Canada on the last possible day we could close the street and hoist it into place with a crane,’ Harris recalls. And of course, he adds, ‘it ended up being the windiest day of the year.'” [Link]
3. “The only solution was a radical one—demolish the interiors and rebuild them from scratch, adding a level for extra space.” [Link]
2. “Fulfilling an important client directive, she combined three poky cooking and pantry areas into a single expansive kitchen. It now features two islands, green-painted cabinets (some with copper-mesh fronts), and a fluted hood. To accentuate the Spanish character, she incorporated dark-stained Douglas-fir ceiling beams, a strategy also employed in the main hallway.” [Link]
1. “Working within the existing footprint, the designer reconfigured the master suite to provide separate his-and-her studies—the latter embellished with a trellis mural by Valle.” [Link]
· All Architectural Digest coverage [Curbed National] · All Renters Week 2013 posts [Curbed National]
Almost everybody has worn a costume at some point in their lives. For Halloween, a school play or just make-believe around the house. But for others, it’s an every-weekend thing.
For these costume enthusiasts, there are numerous communities. Cosplay followers dress up as characters from comics, anime, video games and film; LARPers (live action role players) get together to perform fantasy scenarios dressed up as cowboys, knights or other characters; furries wear furry animal suits for fun; and so on.
But most costume fans have normal day jobs, families and homes in which they put on regular clothes to cook dinner and watch TV. Looking to capture this strange world and the people behind it, photographer Klaus Pichler took photos of costume wearers in full regalia in their most revealing of spaces: their homes.
Acting on the recommendations of a task force convened after Hurricane Sandy, the City Council on Thursday approved new requirements that were expected to make buildings more sustaining during emergencies and prevent some of the hardships that New Yorkers endured after the storm last year.
One change requires residential buildings five stories or higher to add faucets in common areas like laundry rooms so that residents on higher floors have some access to water for drinking, flushing toilets and other uses. Upper floors lose water when electric pumps stop working during blackouts, a problem that worsened conditions and forced many people out of their buildings after the hurricane.
The requirement applies immediately to new residential construction, while existing buildings have eight years to add the fixtures.
“It will make it much more possible to stay in a large building for an extended period without power,” said Russell Unger, chairman of the task force of more than 200 building experts, property owners and city officials that proposed the changes.
Another piece of legislation requires new and existing hospitals and nursing homes in flood zones to install hookups that would enable quick connection to temporary generators and boilers so that such facilities can maintain electricity and heating when the power is out. The law requiring the hookups is effective immediately for new buildings, but gives existing buildings 20 years to comply.
Another new law makes it easier to install backup generators and generators that run on natural gas, which is considered a cleaner and more reliable source of power than diesel fuel. And a fourth law allows temporary flood barriers on sidewalks.
Despite the costs to comply with the new requirements — a 20-story co-op could spend $16,000 for the required one-common-area faucet per 100 residents — property owners have been generally supportive because of the losses suffered during the storm.
“It’d help get buildings up and running faster,” Angela Pinsky, a senior vice president for the Real Estate Board of New York, said of some of the measures.
Once upon a time, “the old SEO” ruled the website marketing world. This was during the early, pioneering days of online marketing — before it was typical for a small business to have a website and long before your grandmother had an online presence that could rival a teenager. The old SEO strategy centered around one primary factor: Link Building. But today, link building as a direct SEO tactic is completely dead. The fact is, Google has found smarter ways to measure the popularity of your website: it’s called social media.
The fact that social media is critical to your online presence (and your search engine rankings) is often a tough pill for small business owners to swallow. It can be a difficult marketing strategy to measure, and it can seem like a strange way to grow their business.
But the days of easily measuring your SEO strategy are long gone. It’s no longer about building X amount of links and creating Y amount of optimized content pages on your website. These old approaches to getting search engine attention are very static. The new strategy is about being dynamic, engaged, and interactive within your marketplace and when acquiring SEO for commercial real estate companies. Social media is the only place you can make that happen.
Here are six reasons social media needs to be an important part of your website marketing and SEO strategy for years to come:
Think about it – why did Google ever allow links to determine which websites ranked above all the others? The answer is simple: links were like “votes” for your website. The more votes you get, the better off you are. So SEO companies started building links (aka “votes”) manually. Then, Google — to counter all of the fake voting — figured out that some votes should count more than other votes. So SEO companies went around manufacturing websites with the best votes. And Google, finally, realized that SEO link building would never work long-term for ranking websites. So Google started penalizing websites with “fake votes” (which is basically anyone who pays a company to do SEO link building for them). Seeing a trend here? The idea behind links as a ranking factor is a very good idea, but since it’s become so easy to manipulate, Google has been forced to turn to social media channels which do the same thing but are much harder to manipulate. Link building was always about social proofing.
When you have a following on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, you create a team of fans who can share your content. That’s what social media is all about, folks — being social! (Imagine that.) So when you write a new blog post on your business blog, you can take that content and share it on Twitter and then get some of your followers to share your content. You can also get your website visitors to share pages of your site and your blog on social media by adding simple social buttons to allow people to quickly and easily “vote” for your content right there on your website. Sure, many of these people will never become your actual customers, but that’s not your objective here. Your objective is to build buzz and attention around your website.
The problem with old school SEO link building is your always building “signs” to your website in places where nobody is looking. It’s something like buying a billboard in the desert. Social media, on the other hand, is a dynamic world of interaction and activity where things are constantly happening in real time. This is why it’s so crucial that you have a social media PRESENCE — not just social media accounts where you never or rarely post anything. You’ve got to be active, you’ve got to be social. This is the fastest way to multiply your online presence simply because it’s where everyone is. If you get in front of the right people (which is a matter of consistency, not luck) then you can build some buzz around your business and your website.
I’m sure you’ve heard the term “social signals” floating around out there. Love it or hate it, this is a real thing. Google is definitely measuring your website’s “pulse rate” on social media channels. How often do you share content on social channels? How often do people visit your website for social channels? How many fans/followers do you have? Does your website have social sharing elements available for visitors? Social signals really is the new “link building” metric you should be concerned about and worried about. Forget about how many links you have — especially if you’re building fake links — and start worrying about the health of your social media presence.
| Armonk NY Weekly Real Estate Report | 11/14/2013 | |
| Homes for sale | 85 | |
| Median Ask Price | $1,999,000.00 | |
| Low Price | $499,000.00 | |
| High Price | $24,900,000.00 | |
| Average Size | 5800 | |
| Average Price/foot | $456.00 | |
| Average DOM | 166 | |
| Average Ask Price | $2,953,827.00 | |
The national housing market is by most measures recovering at a healthy clip. Home prices in some of the hardest-hit markets — places like Reno, Nev., and Phoenix, Ariz. — were up by more than 30% in the third quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year. But while many cities have seen housing market activity heat up, others that were recently among the hottest in the nation have cooled off.
Realtor.com’s Quarterly Turnaround Towns Report measures the strength of the recovery in the nation’s large housing markets. The site ranked the markets with the biggest declines in inventory and inventory age, and the biggest increases in home prices, as markets leading the nation’s recovery in growth and demand. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the eight metropolitan areas that were, according to Realtor.com’s rank, among the hottest markets in the country at the beginning of the year, but as of the third quarter have cooled down considerably.
Many of these markets were among the hardest hit by the housing crisis. Cities like Lakeland, Fla., Reno, Nev., and Bakersfield, Calif., had homes lose more than half their value during the collapse. As Alison Schwartz, vice president at Realtor.com, explained, it is not surprising that these markets were among the hottest at the beginning of this year. “Markets that were significantly impacted by the housing crisis have further to accelerate in order to get back to equilibrium conditions — whereas, markets that were less affected by the housing crisis have less room for acceleration.”
It appears, however, that the rapid recovery in these markets has slowed.
One of the most obvious indicators of a cooling housing market is a slowing of home price growth. In places like Ventura, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., home prices rose by roughly 25% last year. But in the most recent quarter, prices rose by just 2.1% and 0.5%, respectively. In all but one of the hot housing markets that are now cooling off, home prices were up 7% or more in the second quarter of this year. Last quarter, however, most rose only 2% or less. In Orlando, home prices climbed 10% in the second quarter but did not grow at all last quarter.
Straight D’s in high school, 20 jobs before she was 23, and a $1,000 loan from a boyfriend — who would have thought that the woman with this resume would become one of the most successful real estate entrepreneurs in the world?
At the California Association of Realtors Expo last month, Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group and star of TV’s “Shark Tank,” shared important insights that can help every Realtor who is struggling with their business and/or their personal life. Here are three of the most important points that she shared: 1. Make the most of what you’ve got Each of us has different strengths. Corcoran shared a story about when she was working as a waitress.
Apparently, one of the other waitresses was very well endowed and had an unorthodox style of serving food that had almost all the men sitting in her section. When Barbara turned to her mother for advice about how to attract more male customers to her counter, this was her mother’s advice: “If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails.”This later became the title of her best-selling book that highlighted many of the key lessons that she learned from her mother.
The point is that the way you compete is by doing what is unique and authentic to you, not by trying to be something that you’re not. 2. “I’m great at failure”Corcoran’s life story is filled with failures: Straight D’s in school and 20 jobs before age 23 says it all. Corcoran’s life changed, however, when Ramone Simone sat down at her counter.
She immediately fell in love and set her sights on marrying him. Simone and Corcoran started a small real estate company. The company was beginning to do well when Simone announced he was in love with the company’s secretary and intended to marry her. It took Corcoran 18 months before she cut the ties because she couldn’t envision herself in business without him.
After they finished splitting the business assets, Ramone’s parting words are what spurred Corcoran to her success: “You will never succeed without me.”Her response was, “I would rather die that let him see me fail.”
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/07/barbara-corcoran-shark-tank-star-says-rejection-helped-build-successful-real-estate-career/#sthash.RCwa3T7E.dpuf
