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New York Real Estate – Prudential Douglas Elliman Moves to Bedford NY

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© 2010 Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. All Rights Reserved.

All data is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed accurate by the RLS or Douglas Elliman. See Terms of Service for additional restrictions.

All information regarding a property for sale, rental or financing is from sources deemed reliable. No representation is made as to the accuracy thereof, and such information is subject to errors, omission, change of price, rental, commission, prior sale, lease or financing, or withdrawal without notice. All square footage and dimensions are approximate. Exact dimensions can be obtained by retaining the services of a professional architect or engineer.

The number of bedrooms listed above is not a legal conclusion. Each person should consult with his/her own attorney, architect or zoning expert to make a determination as to the number of rooms in the unit that may be legally used as a bedroom.

via elliman.com

Douglas Elliman comes to Bedford NY. Yeah!!! My new boss at Prudential Bedford is Douglas Elliman.

HUD Sets New Rules to Sell HUD Owned Homes in Mt Kisco NY | Mt Kisco Real Estate

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Overhaul of U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) REO sales program features a superstore website, new management composition, increased bidding advantages for owner occupant purchasers, new real estate commission structure, and new policies and procedures that leave non-Realtor licensees scrambling for access to HUD properties.

HUDHomeStore.com is a one-stop shop for all information and resources pertaining to HUD Homes.  The new website replaces a clunky, confusing myriad of government and regional contractor websites that made the search for HUD Homes a laborious, time consuming chore. Yardi, Santa Barbara based property and asset management software developer, built the supersite.

The new website gives real estate agents and consumers access to extensive information about properties, and all contracts, disclosures, and property condition reports can be downloaded at property detail pages. Agents and brokers register at HUDHomeStore.com prior to placing bids on HUD homes, and agents and consumers can sign up to receive automatic e-mail notices when new listings come on the market.

Daily property listings replace weekly announcements.

HUD’s new M&M III Contractor Program is the first overhaul of the agency’s REO sales system since 1999, when the agency outsourced management of its foreclosed FHA inventory as part of Al Gore’s “Reinvent Government” initiative.  HUD is rolling out a new asset distribution method to streamline operations, capitalize on expertise of potential vendors, and provide flexibility in a changing environment.

“These new [M&M III] contracts epitomize FHA’s continuing effort to reduce risk, increase net returns, decrease holding times and improve efficiency in the resale of its inventory of foreclosed properties,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “It is critically important that FHA successfully and efficiently sell its inventory of these properties and these contractors will help us do that.”

HUD’s current inventory of foreclosed FHA property is approximately 44,000 homes. That is up from the usual average level of 35,000 to 40,000.

The M&M III program replaces a single contractor design, separates marketing and maintenance responsibilities, and establishes a management trio in each market area — Asset Managers, Field  Service Managers, and Mortgagee Compliance Managers.

Asset Managers assign HUD properties to Local Listing Brokers and award commissions up to three percent to those listing brokers. A commission based on percentage of sale price replaces a nominal flat fee listing brokers received prior to M&M III. The listing broker commission schedule is designed to incentivize listing brokerages to engage in agent and consumer outreach to spur more HUD Home sales. Selling broker commission caps are reduced from five percent to a maximum of three percent, in an amount corresponding to the Local Listing Broker commission in that market area.

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Buyers Need to See Past What They See When Considering a Purchase in Katonah NY | Katonah NY Real Estate

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Home shopping for first-time homebuyers it’s an exciting, albeit nerve-wracking, experience. If you’re like others in the market for their first home, you probably have in mind exactly how your soon-to-be home will look.

But it’s important not to fall into the bad decorating, dingy walls and dirt-bare back yard equals bad-home trap. If you don’t see past the hideous wallpaper, funky light fixtures and avocado green carpeting, you may miss out on a home with great potential.

And, if you’re looking for a home in a seller’s market where homes are being snatched up as soon as they go on the market, you’ll come to realize you can’t be choosy if you want to make a competitive offer.

One of the first things to do is to get pre-approved for a loan and determine the maximum you can afford to offer for a house. Don’t look at homes that are asking for more than 5 percent above your maximum, otherwise you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment if you find the perfect—but outside your budget—home.

So what to do?
The floor plan of the home is extremely important. If a floor plan isn’t quite to your liking, consider rearranging it or adding on. If you’re looking at an existing home and will need to remodel or expand to suit your needs, the estimated cost of renovation needs to be considered when making an offer.

Also, consider the features of a home:

•Walls. While these are among the easiest to remedy, they also make a huge first impression. If the walls need to be painted, are covered in wallpaper or are painted a color you find distasteful, picture them crisp and clean in the color of your choice—that’s how they could look after you paint them.

•Floors. Like walls, carpet or floor surfaces that are old or outdated can be easily replaced. You could even ask for a carpet allowance in your bid, especially if you’re in a buyer’s market.

•View. Things like old, ugly—even dirty—windows and window treatments can make a view appear less desirable. Those things can be improved, so unless the only view you have is of your neighbor’s clunker on the side of the house, don’t get hung up on what is surely a fixable view.

•Landscaping. Your best bet is a moderately landscaped yard because you can always improve landscaping without spending too much. Worst case, even if you’re looking at dirt, landscaping is one of the easier projects to tackle. Plus you get to design it however you’d like if you’re starting from scratch.

•Closets and garages. You can never have too much storage space, which is why so many newer homes have three-car garages. But if you encounter a converted garage that is now a bedroom or storage room, don’t give up. Converted garages can almost always go back to their original purpose without much cost or labor.

•Kitchen. The most popular room in the house, many homeowners want their kitchen to be large and have modern appliances. Don’t let outdated color schemes deter you because there’s nothing like a fresh coat (or two) of paint to make a kitchen your own. Plus, if you like the rest of the house enough to make an offer, you can give the kitchen a minor spruce-up with some new appliances or a major overhaul complete with new countertops, cabinets, and flooring.

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Foreclosures Can Take a Long Time | North Salem Real Estate

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Patsy Campbell could tell you a thing or two about fighting foreclosure. She’s been fighting hers for 25 years.

The 71-year-old retired insurance saleswoman has been living in her house, a two-story on a half acre in a tidy middle-class neighborhood here in central Florida, since 1978. The last time she made a mortgage payment was October 1985.

.And yet Ms. Campbell has been able to keep her house, protected by a 105-pound pit bull named Dodger and a locked, rusty gate advising visitors to beware of the dog.

“They’re not going to take this house,” says Ms. Campbell. “I intend to stay in this house and maintain it as my residence until I die.”

Ms. Campbell’s foreclosure case has outlasted two marriages, three recessions and four presidents. She has seen seven great-grandchildren born, plum real-estate markets come and go and the ownership of her mortgage change six times. Many Florida real-estate lawyers say it is the longest-lasting foreclosure case they have ever heard of.

The story of how Ms. Campbell has managed to avoid both paying her mortgage and losing her home, which is currently assessed at more than $203,000, is a cautionary tale for lenders that cut corners and followed sloppy practices when originating, processing and servicing mortgages. Lenders are especially vulnerable in the 23 states, including Florida, that require foreclosures to be approved by a judge.
 
Ms. Campbell has challenged her foreclosure on the grounds that her mortgage was improperly transferred between banks and federal agencies, that lawyers for the bank had waited too long to prosecute the case, that a Florida law shields her from all her creditors, and for dozens of other reasons. Once, she questioned whether there really was a debt at all, saying the lender improperly separated the note from the mortgage contract.

She has managed to stave off the banks partly because several courts have recognized that some of her legal arguments have some merit—however minor. Two foreclosure actions against her, for example, were thrown out because her lender sat on its hands too long after filing a case and lost its window to foreclose.

Ms. Campbell, who is handling her case these days without a lawyer, has learned how to work the ropes of the legal system so well that she has met every attempt by a lender to repossess her home with multiple appeals and counteractions, burying the plaintiffs facing her under piles of paperwork.

She offers no apologies for not paying her mortgage for 25 years, saying that when a foreclosure is in dispute, borrowers are entitled to stop making payments until the courts resolve the matter.

“This is every lender’s nightmare,” says Robert Summers, a Stuart, Fla., real-estate lawyer who represents Commercial Services of Perry, an Iowa-based buyer of distressed debt that currently owns Ms. Campbell’s mortgage and has been trying to foreclose. “Someone defending a foreclosure action can raise defenses that are baseless, but are obstacles for the foreclosing lender,” he says, calling the system “an unfair burden” for lenders.

While Ms. Campbell is an extreme case, more homeowners in trouble are starting to use similar tactics and are hiring defense lawyers to challenge their foreclosures, hoping to drag out the foreclosure process long enough to reach a settlement with the lender.

Nationwide, there were 2.1 million mortgages in some stage of foreclosure as of October, according to research firm LPS Applied Analytics. The average loan in foreclosure—the process typically starts when a loan becomes 90 days past due and a bank files a complaint—had been in default for 492 days as of October, up from 289 days at the end of 2005, according to LPS. In Florida, one of the states where foreclosures are handled by courts, the average loan in foreclosure has been delinquent 596 days.

Okeechobee County, a rural jurisdiction of 40,000 known for bass- and perch-fishing festivals, hasn’t experienced a foreclosure problem as intense as in many coastal regions of the state. Ms. Campbell’s house—which has vinyl siding, boards over the windows (to protect it from storm damage, she says), a crumbling backyard swimming pool and an old sedan rusting in the driveway—stands out among the manicured lawns, stucco ranch houses and cattle pastures interspersed among the houses.

In the town of Okeechobee, the county seat, signs of a local economy dependent on agriculture abound: stores selling pre-fab barns, animal feed and lumber line State Road 710 leading into town.

 
Lawyer Robert Summers, below, who represents the current owner of her loan, has faced seven appeals of the foreclosure action from Ms. Campbell since 2000.

Brian Whitehall, Okeechobee’s city administrator, says unemployment in the area is hovering around 14.5%, slightly higher than the statewide average of 12% in September. Foreclosure filings have nearly doubled each year since the state’s housing market peaked in 2006, with 617 filed in 2009. But the national housing slump and the area’s economic woes aren’t immediately apparent in Okeechobee’s quiet neighborhoods.

“We’re not like the Port St. Lucies of the world, where entire subdivisions are empty and it’s like a ghost town,” Mr. Whitehall says.

Court records outline the rocky road Ms. Campbell’s loan has taken over the past 32 years. In 1978, Paul Campbell purchased the house on SW 19th Lane, a few minutes’ drive from the small pharmacy he owned, using a $68,000 mortgage from First Federal Savings and Loan of Martin County. He married Patsy in 1980, and died later that year from emphysema, leaving the property to his wife.

In 1985, Ms. Campbell stopped making mortgage payments because of an illness that caused her to lose income and get behind on her bills, she says.

By then, the savings-and-loan crisis had begun to take hold. First Federal merged with First Fidelity Savings and Loan, which assumed ownership of the Campbell loan. In 1987, First Fidelity sold the mortgage to American Pioneer Savings Bank, an Orlando-based lender that collapsed in the early 1990s.

The loan would change hands four more times, and four different lenders would try to foreclose on her. But every lender that held her loan either merged or collapsed. Each time ownership of the lender changed, the foreclosure case against Ms. Campbell would be dropped.

The loan eventually made its way to the Resolution Trust Corp., the federally owned asset manager that liquidated assets of insolvent S&Ls, and later, to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

In June 1998, the FDIC sold the mortgage to Commercial Services of Perry, which filed to foreclose in 2000. After another illness, Ms. Campbell deeded the house to her daughter, Deborah Pyper. Years later, after Ms. Campbell recovered, the house was deeded back to her. Ms. Pyper declined to comment.

Ms. Campbell’s early briefs in the case were strongly worded and colorful, drafted with the help of a now-retired Okeechobee County lawyer.

The briefs presented dozens of reasons why Ms. Campbell thought the bank didn’t have the right to her house: Paul Campbell’s signature was forged on the original mortgage, she said, and the original sellers never received money from the bank. At other times, she said the mortgage was never properly conveyed between banks and federal agencies, and she demanded paperwork that they were unable to immediately produce.

Attorneys’ fees and court costs from previous cases hadn’t been paid, or the amounts were wrong, she argued. One brief said that “Defendant Campbell specifically denies the existence of any ‘debt.'”

In 2007, a trial-court judge tossed out all but two of Ms. Campbell’s defenses, calling the case an “unnecessary paper chase which has been an unproductive and unnecessary use of judicial resources.”

Commercial Services paid a court-determined amount to settle court costs from previous cases, and moved to take the foreclosure to trial, with a date set for early October 2010.

In response, Ms. Campbell filed for bankruptcy, effectively blocking the foreclosure until a stay is lifted by a bankruptcy-court judge.

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6 Steps for Your Energy Audit in Mount Kisco NY | Mt Kisco NY Real Estate

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Is your home squandering precious energy? Here’s how you can search out areas of energy waste that may be costing you money. By following up on problems, you can lower energy bills by 5% to 30% annually. With annual energy bills averaging $2,200, investing in fixes or energy-efficient replacement products could save you up to $660 within a year.

Leave the deerstalker hat and magnifying glass behind. All you’ll need for energy sleuthing is a flashlight, screwdriver, paint stirrer, tape measure, and—not just for serenity’s sake—a stick of incense.

1. Hunt down drafts. Hold a lit stick of incense near windows, doors, electrical outlets, range hoods, plumbing and ceiling fixtures, attic hatches, and ceiling fans in bathrooms—anywhere drafts might sneak in. Watch for smoke movement. Note what sources need caulk, sealant, weather-stripping, or insulation.

2. Check attic insulation. Winter or summer, insulation does the most good when it’s overhead, so start with the attic. First, do you have insulation? If the insulation you see covers the tops of the joists by several inches, you probably have enough. If the insulation is only even with the tops of the joists, you probably need to add insulation.

3. Check wall insulation. Remove electrical outlet covers to see if your wall contains insulation. Installing spray foam insulation is easy to do and can dramatically improve a building or home’s energy efficiency and thermal resistance. Shut off power to the receptacle before probing beside the electrical box with a wooden paint stirrer. Check some switch boxes as well. Their higher wall location lets you see if blown-in insulation has settled.

4. Look for stains on insulation. These often indicate air leaks from a hole behind the insulation, such as a duct hole or crack in an exterior wall. Seal gaps with caulk or spray foam insulation brooklyn. Radon is widely known in the home improvement industry. It’s kind of one of those things that no one likes to discuss, because the danger is so surreal. You’ve probably heard of toxins being referred to as silent killers, and when it comes to radon; that’s no understatement. Maybe you haven’t heard that much about radon or what you have heard has not been too convincing. Does radon seem to be some “new” thing that is going to cause cancer and end the world? Everything seems to cause cancer, but the trick is in knowing how to prevent cancer, before it begins. Not everything causes cancer. That way of thinking is just some comedian’s way to laugh-off the seriousness of so many people contracting this fatal disease. But, it’s real. Radon is a proven carcinogen, and experts know more about radon than other carcinogens. So, if you were told to avoid a proven carcinogen, you know that you would. Please, this is important. Radon doesn’t smell, it doesn’t have a taste, and you can’t see it; there aren’t even any immediate symptoms. Radon has the ability to kill you without even giving you a chance to defend yourself, without even knowing, not even a rash! Radon is not only found in the air, but also in water, so be sure to have your well water tested for radon. Although radon does not give you much of a chance to defend yourself or trace whether you have been exposed, radon testing and mitigation systems have been developed in order to measure the radon count in your home, school, or workplace. There are even ways to make these places almost 100 percent radon-free. Not only do you want the places where you spend the most time to have a low radon count, but you want it gone. Did you know that most people, who have cancer from radon exposure, did not get it because they were saturated in it; but because of a low radon concentration? Don’t let radon fool you into thinking you won’t get sick, or that you and your loved ones have no way to protect yourselves. There are experts who know how to regulate radon levels, and provide you with the protection that you need. You can also visit https://www.ph-el.dk/radonsikring for more information.

5. Inspect exposed ducts. Look for obvious holes and whether joints are sealed. Heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) ducts are made of thin metal and easily conduct heat. Consider insulating them. Uninsulated or poorly insulated ducts in unconditioned spaces can lose 10% to 30% of the energy used to heat and cool your home.

6. Check anything that goes through an exterior wall. Examine dryer ducts, plumbing lines under sinks and vanities, anything that pierces a wall. Any gaps around it should be sealed with spray foam insulation or caulk.

Read more: http://www.houselogic.com/articles/diy-home-energy-audit-6-easy-steps/#ixzz17NxAangl

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Tax Breaks for Finishing Your Basement in Chappaqua NY | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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It’s no secret that finishing your basement will increase your home’s value. What you may not know is the money you spend on this type of so-called capital improvement could also help lower your tax bill when you sell your house.

Tax rules let you add capital improvement expenses to the cost basis of your home. Why is that a big deal? Because a higher cost basis lowers the total profit—capital gain, in IRS-speak—you’re required to pay taxes on.

The tax break doesn’t come into play for everyone. Most homeowners are exempted from paying taxes on the first $250,000 of profit for single filers ($500,000 for joint filers). If you move frequently, maybe it’s not worth the effort to track capital improvement expenses. But if you plan to live in your house a long time or make lots of upgrades, saving receipts is a smart move.

What counts as a capital improvement?

While you may consider all the work you do to your home an improvement, the IRS looks at things differently. A rule of thumb: A capital improvement increases your home’s value, while a non-eligible repair just returns something to its original condition. According to the IRS, capital improvements have to last for more than one year and add value to your home, prolong its life, or adapt it to new uses.

Capital improvements can include everything from a new bathroom or deck to a new water heater or furnace. Page 9 of IRS Publication 523 has a list of eligible improvements. There are limitations. The improvements must still be evident when you sell. So if you put in wall-to-wall carpeting 10 years ago and then replaced it with hardwood floors five years ago, you can’t count the carpeting as a capital improvement. Repairs, like painting your house or fixing sagging gutters, don’t count. The IRS describes repairs as things that are done to maintain a home’s good condition without adding value or prolonging its life. 

There can be a fine line between a capital improvement and a repair, says Erik Lammert, tax research specialist at the National Association of Tax Professionals. For instance, if you replace a few shingles on your roof, it’s a repair. If you replace the entire roof, it’s a capital improvement. Same goes for windows. If you replace a broken window pane, repair. Put in a new window, capital improvement. One exception: If your home is damaged in a fire or natural disaster, everything you do to restore your home to its pre-loss condition counts as a capital improvement.

Read more: http://www.houselogic.com/articles/tax-breaks-capital-improvements-your-home/#ixzz17NtfHeMB

 

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Armonk NY Needs Those Construction Jobs | Armonk NY Real Estate

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The National Bureau of Economic Research announced in September that the recession officially ended in June of 2009. However, nearly 15 million people remain unemployed and countless more are working fewer hours than they would like. Unemployment threatens the housing industry as it erodes consumer confidence causing would-be buyers to shy away from big purchasers like homes, and pushing many homeowners into foreclosure. Employment growth is the key to a robust recovery; and while last spring provided a reason for optimism, job growth will not be even around the country.

Officially, the recession ended more than a year ago, but the unemployment rate remained at 9.6 percent in August and is forecasted to remain above 9 percent through 2012. Furthermore, the unemployment rate varies around the country. As of August, the highest rate of unemployment in the 159 markets monitored by NAR Research was 14.8 percent in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, while the lowest was 3.1 percent in Bismarck, North Dakota. The spread between these two markets’ unemployment rates is close to its widest point in two decades at 11.7, but is below the recent peak of 14.9 in January of 2010. With the exception of the spike in 2006 caused by Hurricane Katrina, the spread between the highest and lowest unemployment rates had not been this wide since
February 1993.

The expansion of this spread reflects the widely different experiences of those markets which have performed relatively well compared to those that experienced a more severe decline in growth.

The Geography of Unemployment

Geographically speaking, many of the most resilient markets in the country are in the Northern Midwest, in particular Fargo, Sioux Falls, and Bismarck; as well as in the Middle Atlantic and a handful of markets in New England and in western and upstate New York. Washington, D.C. and Baltimore have also done well. Both of these markets have large education and health service sectors, which have weathered the recession. Additionally, Washington, D.C. garners a large share of its employment from the Federal government, a notably stable employer. Some of the hardest hit markets in the country are those where home construction was very strong during the boom and played an important part in the local economy. As the housing market slowed, layoffs in construction and the mortgage finance industries rose. The credit crunch spread economic decline to the rest of the economy and this second wave of unemployment added to already swelled pools of unemployed workers. Many of the high unemployment cities in Florida and central California as well as Las Vegas and Phoenix depicted below experienced this pattern.

Unemployment by Industry

More often than not, the geography of unemployment reflects the relative concentrations of certain industries. Nationally, the construction and manufacturing industries were hardest hit over the last four years. Employment in the construction industry fell 26 percent from August of 2006 through August of 2010, while it fell 17 percent in manufacturing, and 11 percent in information services. The trade and transportation sector slid only 6 percent over this period, but that sector accounted for 19 percent of total national employment in August of 2006. When the economy slows, fewer products are shipped, so this sector feels the pinch sooner than most. Memphis, home to Federal Express, and other cities that act as hubs for shipping and warehousing have experienced a sharp decline in employment, but will likely be at the forefront of any expansion. The manufacturing sector accounted for 10 percent of total employment in August of 2006, so the 17 percent decline in that sector over the subsequent four years was deeply felt. Likewise, the share of total employment in both the manufacturing and construction industries declined over this 4-year period. The manufacturing industry’s share of total employment slid from 10 percent to 9 percent by August of 2010, while the construction industry’s share slid from 6 percent to 4 percent.

Not all sectors have withered, though. Employment in mining and logging grew 7 percent over the last four years as prices of oil and some minerals surged. The Federal government expanded to supply services for the unemployed as well as to support U.S. foreign and domestic security policy. Finally, employment in the education and health services sector grew 10 percent as the baby boom generation continues to march into retirement and their parents require more care. Employment growth in this sector caused its share of total employment to rise from 13 percent in August of 2006 to 15 percent four years later. Likewise, the government’s share of total employment rose from 16 percent to 17 percent over this same time frame. These two industries have been boons for the floundering labor market.

The experience of industries at the national level is reflected in unemployment at the local level. Furthermore, the industrial makeup of local markets will likely determine whether their path of expansion is relatively rapid and robust or protracted and modest. Markets with high shares of unemployed construction workers will feel the drag of this industry for many quarters to come.

Unemployment in Construction and Housing Inventory

Nationally, the construction industry made up 6.0 percent of the employed work force in August of 2006. As depicted in the map below, construction employment made up a greater share of the total work force in many markets across the West, Southwest, Southeast, and Middle Atlantic. A few markets had significantly larger shares like Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (10.5 percent), Reno (11.3 percent), Las Vegas (12.2 percent), Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice (18.8 percent), and Phoenix (10.1 percent).

By 2010, the landscape of employment in construction had changed dramatically. That industry’s share of employment fell in most markets with the exception of a few locations in Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota and several other cities spread across the country. Coastal and Northern California along with Reno, Las Vegas, and a slew of markets in Florida experienced declines greater than 2 percentage points. Cape Coral-Fort Myers was one of the hardest hit cities with the construction share of employment falling 8.4 percentage points from 16.7 percent in August of 2006 to 8.3 percent by August of 2010. The Carolinas were all hit hard with Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, Charleston-North Charleston, and Raleigh-Cary declining by 2.7 percentage points, 2.6 percentage points, and 2.5 percentage points, respectively.

Many markets that experienced a construction boom are now burdened by high concentrations of excess inventory, which will stymie demand for housing and retard future construction. The decline in construction also impacted workers in industries that supported construction like manufacturing and food services. This situation will limit job growth in the local financial and service sectors as well as local governments which depend on property tax revenue. Conversely, markets with higher than average concentrations of workers in manufacturing may expand sooner than mothers as businesses increase orders for the machinery and goods needed to expand production. Likewise as shipments and orders rise, so will those markets that supply shipping and warehousing services.

NAR Research Report

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NAR AWards for Tech Tools | Bedford NY Real Estate

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Mark Flavin is recognized as a recipient of the 2010 REALTOR® Technology Spotlight Award in the Pioneer category.   CRT asked a few questions.   Check out what Mark shared with us:

What is your favorite tech tool out there?  What makes it so great? At the moment my favorite tech tool is Dropbox. This free online service allows you to easily share files and folders between computers and even devices. With more email providers actively blocking file attachments and putting restrictions on messages size the Dropbox public folder feature provides an easy way to securely share files with clients by sending them a link rather than an attachment. Finally Dropbox allows you to collaboratively share files with other Dropbox uses which is a great way to work on shared resources without managing multiple attachments. 

Where do you get the latest technology information to keep you ahead of the curve? Each morning I read/skim through approximately 120 different blogs, online news sites and magazines. But the best source of information for me is our members and association staff. I listen to what they are trying to do in the field or what pain-points they are encountering in a transaction and then I proactively look for the tools and services to address these challenges. Since our members are always trying to stay inline and ahead of the consumer this naturally pushes me forward.

As a tech thought leader – what kind of information are you looking to get your hands on? At a high level I try to keep informed of changes in consumer behavior and emerging technologies. This information along with our annual strategic planning process is critical for me to identify the right opportunities for new services or tools our members can utilize in their business. The resources from NAR including the field guides, NAR insights and member surveys are items that I regularly review and share. Ultimately though keeping in touch with agents and brokers and understanding their unique challenges from a business and service perspective is without a doubt the most critical information resource I have available to me.

What is the biggest trend you see developing in real estate right now – tech or otherwise?  Right now we are seeing a convergence between smartphones, video, mobile broadband and social networking with the smartphone becoming the unified messaging and multimedia creation platform. This is impacting consumer behaviors in fundamental ways which are causing agents and brokers to make service and marketing decisions they have not been forced to consider since the emergence of the web. Consumers are expecting their agents to be available around the clock and be able to respond to requests for information across a variety of different channels. This is forcing the Brokers and Agents into new learning curves from choosing the best device to selecting their platform and how they are going to integrate these new tools into their service catalog. For example all estimates point to 2015 as being the year when mobile devices will outnumber desktops yet at the moment Brokers and Agents are just now starting to consider how their web-presence looks on these devices.

Finally, which do you like best – iPhone; Android; WindowsMobile; Blackberry; Other?  Why? My two favorite devices are the iPhone and Android. With the exception of some unique platform specific features both devices are comparatively similar. The three reasons I prefer iPhone and Android are unified messaging, web display and application availability. The Blackberry does a great job at responding to emails but the iPhone and Android make it much easier to respond across a variety of channels including email, text, voice and instant messaging. Both devices provide a web experience which is largely similar to desktop whereas with the Blackberry and Windows Mobile the mobile web experience is entirely different and often times much worse than the desktop experience. Finally the infinite expandability and customization via different applications make both the Android and iPhone highly efficient multifunction purpose tools. For example you can take a video with the built in camera make some changes and upload directly to your website without ever touching a computer.

Pound Ridge NY Home Wins AIA 2010 Design Award | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate

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FOUR residences in Westchester County — two multifamily and two single-family homes — are among 13 winners of the 2010 Design Awards given every year for the past 20 by the 600-member Westchester-Hudson Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The awards, conferred late last month at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, acknowledge “design excellence and the best architecture recently produced in the chapter area or by a chapter member,” said Raymond Beeler, a Pelham architect and a chairman of the awards committee.

Thematically they seem to share a focus on the environment, and the safest, most practical ways to live within it. The four structures are:

FLOOD HOUSE, MAMARONECK

This 1,700-square-foot two-family house near Long Island Sound was built by Habitat for Humanity for a mother and daughter who lost their 1940s single-family cottage when the Mamaroneck River flooded in April 2007.

Built on concrete piers, the new residence was designed by Jason Taylor, the principal of the J. Taylor Design Group in New Rochelle, and Nick Viazzo, an associate, to rise above floodwaters, to resist hurricane-force winds and to be accessible to persons with disabilities. It uses L- and I-shaped piers as both stilts and buttresses against wind.

“This is a very different-looking house for this neighborhood,” Mr. Taylor said, alluding to the piers. “It looks like something you might find along a beach or perched beside a lake. But it actually sits along a normal suburban street with your standard mix of traditional-style homes.” He used cedar shingles and paint colors that blend with nearby houses.

Each half of the two-family has two bedrooms, a bath and a large living-dining area with a kitchen. Because one of the occupants is elderly, it has an elevator that serves both sides.

Mr. Taylor incorporated energy-efficient and sustainable elements into the house. But it is not certified by the United States Green Building Council as adhering to standards known as LEED (for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), he said, because “that entails a lot of record-keeping and a LEED coordinator, which makes it too expensive.” The project, using volunteer labor, cost $250,000.

RIVER TOWN HOUSE, HASTINGS

Christina Griffin, an architect in Hastings-on-Hudson, converted a 1910 railroad flat building into two condominiums, in accordance with the highest level of LEED certification. The structure has thermal panels and is designed to harvest and recycle rainwater, among other things. The three-story building — with glass walls and roof decks at each level — overlooks the Hudson River, the Metro-North railroad tracks and remnants of factories where its original occupants worked.

The architect owns the building. The condos, each with three bedrooms, are both listed at $999,000 and have been on the market for a year. Ms. Griffin questioned whether a market exists for LEED construction. “People say they like the idea of a green house,” she said, “but they don’t want to pay more for one, especially in the current real estate market.”

She said that even though prices for many materials used in green construction had come down in the past 12 months, the condos were far more expensive to build than if she had not sought LEED Platinum certification, the highest level. The cost of the project, including purchase of the land, was $1.3 million.

LINK HOUSE, POUND RIDGE

The three-bedroom residence in Pound Ridge, by Carol Kurth of Bedford, is called Link House in part because it seeks to link 21st-century advances with a midcentury-style aesthetic. One of Ms. Kurth’s first projects, dating to 1983, it has since been occupied and renovated by five different owners.

She was commissioned by the current owners, a retired couple, to return the house to its origins, and to add a guest suite and a large music room.

A trend in renovating today, especially when it comes to modern houses built in the last century, is to simplify, creating what Ms. Kurth describes as a “spa-like serenity.” For example, the bathrooms in the Link House have cedar walls, ivory stone countertops and a floor that resembles concrete — “very natural,” she said, “without any veining or swirling patterns.”

Ms. Kurth observed that in the current climate there are decidedly fewer commissions for residential construction, but that “what we’re doing a lot of these days is breathing new life into homes.”

While declining to provide specifics, the owners said the renovation cost less than $400,000.

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Loans Entering Special Servicing Before Default South Salem Real Estate

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While there have been signs of improvement, the local real estate industry remains plagued by a rash of troubled properties saddled with bad loans and falling values.

The number of New York City commercial properties with loans that entered special servicing surged 80% in the first 11 months of 2010, reaching 54, compared with a total of 30 for all of 2009. Apartment houses accounted for the largest share of the bad loans, with a total of 21. There were 13 office towers in the crop of poorly performing assets. And each property’s value sank by an average of 47%, to $220 million.

The outlook may not be as bleak as the recent data suggest, says Paul Mancuso, a vice president at Trepp, which tracks real estate debt and provided the above-mentioned figures.

The primary reason for the sharp increase in the number of loans entering special servicing was a late-2009 change in the tax code, under which loans can enter the process without first going into default. That allows owners to get an earlier start on the process of negotiating terms with lenders.

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