Tag Archives: Westchester Real Estate

September foreclosure activity falls 27% | Katonah NY Homes

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Foreclosure filings in the U.S. dropped 27% year-over-year in September, RealtyTrac reported in its latest foreclosure update.

The report shows 131,232 U.S. homes facing either a default notice, auction sale or bank repossession in September, down 27% from last year and 2% from the previous update.

In fact, the month of September marked 36 months of annual declines in foreclosure activity, with third-quarter foreclosure activity falling to its lowest quarterly level since 2Q 2007, RealtyTrac noted.

As a whole, the data and research firm recorded 376,931 properties with foreclosure filings in the third quarter, down 7% from the previous quarter and a 29% drop from last year.

“The September and third-quarter foreclosure numbers show a housing market that is haltingly returning to health,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. “In a healthy housing market foreclosures are rare but streamlined while still protecting the rights of the homeowner.”

“While foreclosures are clearly becoming fewer and farther between in most markets, the increasing time it takes to foreclose is holding back a more robust and sustainable recovery,” Blomquist added.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/27345-september-foreclosure-activity-falls-27

Chinese investors remain confident in the US | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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According to The Wall Street Journal, China recently purchased a record amount of U.S. government agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, even as it sold Treasurys. The WSJ has more:

“There is no evidence that Chinese investors are losing confidence in the U.S. market,” said Ian Lyngen, a senior government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group LLC. “In fact the notion that they are buying dips [in bond prices] is longer-term constructive” for the U.S.

                    Source: WSJ

Fixed Mortgage Rates Little Changed | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates changing little for the week amid the federal debt impasse in Washington, D.C. and a light week of economic data releases.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.23 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending October 10, 2013, up from last week when it averaged 4.22 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.39 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.31 percent with an average 0.7 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.29 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 2.70 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.05 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.03 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 2.73 percent.
  • 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.64 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.63 percent. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.59 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 the Regional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quotes Attributed to Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist, Freddie Mac.

“Mortgage rates were little changed amid the federal debt impasse in Washington, D.C. and a light week of economic data releases. Of the few releases, the private sector added an estimated 166,000 jobs in September, which were fewer than the market consensus and followed a downward revision of 17,000 workers in August, according to the ADP Research Institute. The Institute for Supply Management reported a greater slowing in growth in the nonmanufacturing industry in September than the market consensus forecast.”

Freddie Mac was established by Congress in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the nation’s residential mortgage markets. Freddie Mac supports communities across the nation by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Today Freddie Mac is making home possible for one in four home borrowers and is one of the largest sources of financing for multifamily housing. For more information please visit www.FreddieMac.com and Twitter: @FreddieMac.

Why Aren’t More Bloggers Claiming Ownership of Their Content? | Katonah NY Real Estate

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Why aren't more bloggers claiming ownership of their content

Working  in the world of digital marketing, I read a lot of blogs every day. When I login  to my email every morning I find my inbox full of new articles. All sorts of  blogs are talking about everything and anything to do with digital marketing and  beyond.

One  thing I know is that Google+ is still a hot topic.

Those  of us who advocate this social platform talk about it as the future of social  media and content marketing. We discuss the benefits of using it for business,  about claiming authorship markup and publisher markup and how it has a great  impact on search rankings and click through rates.

Then  there are the sceptics who say it’s boring. Some say it’s a bad version of  Facebook. Others say it’s not user friendly and it’s just another tool created  by Google in its quest to monopolise all things internet  related.

What is Google+ about?

Most people in the digital marketing industry agree that Google+ has become  an essential part of social media marketing. But it still surprises me when I  speak to people (in my industry) who are still not using Google+, still not sure  what it’s all about. Many see it as not  being a useful marketing tool for  their business.

What is eye opening is when I research things in the digital industry I am  presented with a Google SERP (search engine result page) in which only a handful  of results have a Google+ cover photo next to it! If we’re in the digital  industry, and blogging extensively, aren’t we all supposed to be using Google+  and claiming authorship?

Why Google+ authorship is important

Surely, we all know what Authorship Markup is by now? Could  it be that many blog authors dismiss it as not important or not relevant? It’s  not exactly a lengthy process to claim authorship, but perhaps many bloggers are  not active on Google+? There could be numerous reasons why adoption rates appear  low, but to me it’s a no brainer. So why aren’t more bloggers claiming ownership  of their content?

If you’re doing it right then you should see the following.

  • An increase in search rankings
  • Improvement in CTR (click through rate)
  • More people with access to your other work

So why wouldn’t you adopt this practice?

Judging from what I’ve read, Google is planning to develop this further and  elaborate on author rank, where influential authors appear higher in SERPs, even  if their post is published on a lower ranking website. All this seems very  exciting. So the earlier we start claiming authorship and using Google+ to  establish a reputation, the sooner we will reap the benefits.

 

 

 

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/10/01/why-arent-more-bloggers-claiming-ownership-of-their-content/#IgqfHGDspqHHzRwO.99

Mortgage rates drop for 3rd straight week amid shutdown fears | Bedford Real Estate

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The government shutdown — which the CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association said today is stoking “confusion and fear” among borrowers — helped drive down mortgage rates to their lowest level in more than three months, according to Freddie Mac’s latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.22 percent with an average point of 0.7 for the week ending Oct. 3, down from 4.32 percent last week but up from 3.36 percent a year ago, Freddie Mac reported.

“With the onset of the federal government shutdown and declining consumer confidence, fixed mortgage rates fell for the third consecutive week,” said Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist at Freddie Mac. “Consumer sentiment fell for the second month in a row in September to its lowest reading since April, according to the University of Michigan.”

Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages and five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans also decreased, while rates on one-year Treasury-indexed ARMs stayed flat.

 

 

Source: Freddie Mac

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/mortgage-rates-drop-for-3rd-straight-week-amid-shutdown-fears/#sthash.c2iOUc4v.dpuf

What’s LEED All About, Anyway? | Bedford Corners Real Estate

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How can you tell the difference between houses that look environmentally friendly and ones that actually are? Home certifications can help. Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) is just one certification that helps all sectors of the home-building industry use some of the best methods of sustainable design and construction.
Your first two questions about certification are likely going to be, “What’s in it for me? and “How much is this going to cost?” Let’s look at some of the basics.

modern by Butler Armsden Architects

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Benefits of LEED Certification
The benefits touch everyone involved. For the homeowner a voluntary certification like LEED for homes increases accountability for quality checks on the construction site, therefore decreasing the frequency of costly mistakes. Plus, according to the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED-certified homes use on average 20 to 30 percent less energy and water, with some homes reporting up to 60 percent less energy use than a home built to meet code minimums.
In addition to the decrease in monthly utility bills, many states and cities have tax breaks and incentives for environmentally friendly construction. While the LEED rating itself doesn’t address individual incentives, the requirements often overlap. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy has a searchable Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency. You and your project team can look up federal and state incentives to give your budget a little boost.
Finally, if you ever need to sell your home, you can ask for a higher price for a LEED home than similar houses on the market. One study in California, for example, showed an 8 to 9 percent increase in the market value of green-certified homes.
Meanwhile, any builders wanting to set themselves apart should consider learning how to build according to LEED requirements. Most agree that there is a steep learning curve, but with more than 100,000 home units certified in the U.S. (and many more in the pipeline), it could set an experienced business even further apart from the crowd or help a new business leap ahead. The same goes for designers who want to show clients that they can be creative even within environmental parameters.
Costs of LEED Certification It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact percentage increase in construction costs that you are likely to see with a LEED home. It depends on what you are comparing it to. In an apples-to-apples comparison with a high-quality, uncertified construction that follows best-practice guidelines, the cost difference is hardly noticeable: maybe 2 to 5 percent higher).
In a comparison with the average home on the market that just meets the minimum building codes (apples to oranges in this little fruit metaphor), the percentage would be much higher: maybe 20 percent.
contemporary exterior by Shades Of Green Landscape Architecture

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By earning points in eight categories, the finished house can achieve one of these ratings:

  • Platinum (90 to 136 points)
  • Gold (75 to 89 points)
  • Silver (60 to 74 points)
  • Certified (45 to 59 points)

Whether you are in the market for a LEED home or looking to build one yourself, understanding what goes into these scoring categories can help you formulate your questions for your real estate agent or home builder.
1. Innovation and Design Process (ID)
Points available: 11
Points earned for: Making sure that the home is sustainable, durable and cost efficient, with a well-rounded approach to the design.
Things to keep in mind: This category of credits is meant to see if you really mean it — if you really want to build a sustainable home or if you’re just looking for a quick certification. The lesson: Plan early and plan often. You need to get your project team on the same page as soon as possible and make sure that every professional involved is willing to use the best methods, rather than the easiest methods.
The design of your home should be integrated with the selection of your team. It should take into consideration the path of the sun and the use of solar heat to reduce consumption. The home should also be durable and high quality, not only to last you through the years, but also to provide a good base for whatever the future of building technology may hold.
2. Location and Linkages (LL)
Points available: 10
Points earned for: Selecting a sustainable location for your home. To be truly green, you must try to use an existing infrastructure.

Social media mistakes you may be making | Armonk NY Realtor

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I’m pretty well known for making mistakes. It’s kind of a known trait of mine. Just this weekend I walked into a door because I didn’t open it properly first.

When it comes to social media, though, I try hard to learn from mistakes since they’re all saved for me to reflect on. Plus, I research and write about social media enough to have access to stats that make it easier to pick up and rectify these kind of mistakes.

The funny thing about some of the mistakes I looked at for this post is that the advice to avoid them is counterintuitive—sometimes even controversial. As we’ve seen before, though, counterintuitive advice is sometimes the best kind.

1. Losing out on traffic – Post the same thing multiple times

This is something that can be pretty controversial – a lot of people discourage re-posting links to the same content more than once. A good example of the controversy and why some tweeters continue to do it is Guy Kawasaki’s experience.

Guy is a big proponent of repeating your tweets, and has faced a lot of flack for it. After all, it doesn’t really make sense to send out the same thing multiple times… or does it?

Guy makes a good point that his followers probably aren’t reading his tweets at every moment of the day.

I repeat my tweets because I don’t assume that all my followers are reading me 24 x 7 x 365.

For Guy’s tweets that link to posts on his site, Holy Kaw, he repeats these four times, eight hours apart:

I picked eight hours because this means that even if the first tweet goes out at the worst times for traffic, one of the repeats will hit the best times… For example, a first tweet at 3:00 am Pacific then hits 11:00 am Pacific and 7:00 pm Pacific.

Guy also notes that he would lose out on traffic if he didn’t repeat his tweets, which is something we’ve examined before when looking at the best time to tweet:

I’ve examined the click-through patterns on repeat tweets, and each one gets about the same amount of traffic. If I tweeted stories only once, I would lose 75% of the traffic that I could get.

Here’s a typical example of the traffic from one of Guy’s tweets:

guy kawasaki tweet graph The 7 biggest counterintuitive social media mistakes you may be making

First post: 739 clicks

Second post: 718 clicks

Third post: 565 clicks

If I follow common wisdom, I would have tweeted it once and lost 1,200 clicks—that’s the bottom line.

This is something we do at Buffer as well. We use different headlines to test which one gets the best clicks for a particular post, and then we repeat the best one using Buffer to reach different timezones with the same content.

 

 

http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/10/05/7-biggest-counterintuitive-social-media-mistakes-you-may-be-making/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily

 

45 Social Media Tools and Tips to Improve Your Marketing | Waccabuc NY Realtor

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Are you looking for some practical tips and tools to help with your social media marketing?

Do you find it difficult to keep up with how quickly social media is evolving?

In this article, I outline a collection of technology tools and tips you’ll want to consider using to improve your presence across social media.

Why Tools?

It takes a lot of time to create quality content, engage on social profiles and sustain online relationships that support your business goals.

Larger businesses and corporations often have teams of people dedicated solely to these tasks.

For smaller businesses that don’t have the luxury of staff or financial resources, there are tools to help. But there are also efficient shortcuts and tips to help you get more out these technology tools.

By using some of these tips to strategically choose your tools, you can get more out of your social media marketing.

Here we go.

#1: Monitor Your Blog Visitors’ Activity With Lucky Orange

The more you know about your website visitors, the more you cater to their needs with content, layout and design.

Lucky Orange monitors and interacts with your blog visitors and lets you:

  • View details of who’s on your site now, what pages they’re visiting, where they’ve come from and how long they’ve been on your site
  • Interact with visitors in real time, through a chat box
  • View real-time or recorded videos of your website visitors browsing your site
  • View an overall heat map which shows the key areas your website visitors are clicking on

In the image below you see the time people spent on your site, how they found your site, the previous site they were on and the country they are browsing from.

Lucky Orange provides great information about your visitors.

Start by recording sessions of individual users browsing your blog and see where they’re scrolling and what they click on. Then interact with visitors while they’re on the site and ask them questions about their experience on your website or the content they’re browsing.

Use what you learn to fine-tune your site.

#2: Use Smush.it to Reduce the Size of Your Images

The load time of your page is one of many factors that Google uses to determine your web ranking, so it’s important to reduce the size of your images where possible.

Smush.it is an image compression tool that’s “lossless.”

You upload the images, reduce them and then download a version that’s smaller in size but not in quality.

Upload your images and reduce them in size.

Use these smaller images to improve your social media marketing performance.

#3: Implement a Content Distribution Network

When I browse a website or blog from Ireland that’s hosted in the United States, it’s likely to run slower for me than for someone who’s browsing from within the United States.

To standardize your load times, use a hosting provider that uses a content distribution network (CDN). A CDN keeps the latest copy of your website on various servers around the world so visitors get your content from the server that’s nearest to them, which results in faster load times.

 

 

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/45-social-media-tools-and-tips/

 

 

 

 

 

Kerry Kennedy’s Lawyer Reportedly Trying To Move Trial From Armonk | Armonk Homes

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Lawyers on both sides of Bedford resident Kerry Kennedy’s impaired driving trial are apparently looking beyond the North Castle Courthouse in Armonk for a bigger space, according to a report by the Associated Press via the Wall Street Journal.

Defense attorney Gerald Lefcourt has reportedly said that Armonk’s 60-seat courtroom won’t be able to hold the expected numbers of reporters, interested residents and a jury for Kennedy’s trial, the report said.

Other venues are being scouted, although no trial date has been set, according to the AP.

Kennedy was arrested in July 2012 after she swerved her Lexus into a tractor-trailer on Interstate 684 in Armonk.  She was charged with driving under the influence of an unknown substance, for which she pleaded not guilty, saying she accidently took a sleeping pill.

She tried to have her case dismissed this past May but was denied.

Kennedy is the daughter of Sen. Robert Kennedy and the niece of President John F. Kennedy.  She is also the ex-wife of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

 

 

http://mtkisco.dailyvoice.com/news/kerry-kennedys-lawyer-reportedly-trying-move-trial-armonk

 

Westchester Senator Cries Foul On $14 Toll For Tappan Zee Bridge | North Salem NY Real Estate

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New York State Senator Greg Ball (R – Patterson) announced a bipartisan public-private partnership bill in an effort to keep tolls down on the new Tappan Zee Bridge.

New York State recently learned that the federal loans requested will only cover roughly 33 percent of the bridge’s cost as opposed to the 49 percent that was requested a year ago.  The result would be tolls approaching $14 or more.

“Over $14 is too high,” Ball said in a statement. “Simply raising the toll is not a sustainable solution. We can’t continue to pass the tab onto those that cross the bridge and the tax payers. New York is the capitol of capital and we must unlock the private sector to fund and maintain this vital infrastructure project.”

Assemblyman Robin Schimminger (D- Kenmore), chairman of the Assembly Committee on Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry, has joined ball in creating the new legislation.

“This forward-thinking legislation creates a framework that will allow for and encourage investment in the state by private companies in order to advance the development and operation of public infrastructure,” Schimminger said in a statement. “This would be extremely helpful to efforts aimed at boosting Upstate New York’s economy.”

The public-private partnership legislation will help transfer the risks associated with building, financing, operating and maintaining public infrastructure projects from the taxpayers to the private sector. One of the key benefits is that private partners are responsible for project cost overruns eliminating the government’s risk going back to taxpayers for additional funds.

 

 

 

 

http://whiteplains.dailyvoice.com/politics/westchester-senator-cries-foul-14-toll-tappan-zee-bridge