Monthly Archives: March 2013

Pending home sales slip in February | Armonk NY Real Estate

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Pending sales of existing homes dipped 0.4 percent from January to February, but remained at their second-highest level in nearly three years, according to an index maintained by the National Association of Realtors.

NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index, which represents existing-home contracts signed but not yet closed, slipped from a downwardly revised 105.2 in January to 104.8 in February. But February’s score was still up 8.4 percent from a year earlier, NAR reported.  

The report comes a day after the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Index posted its highest year-over-year gain in six years. The positive housing news helped drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a record high and push the S&P 500 Index to just two points short of its own all-time high.

A monthly report released yesterday also showed that new-home sales remained close to the four-year high that they reached in January, dipping 4.6 percent month over month. 

Tight inventory, which has risen marginally recently, is preventing contract signings from increasing more, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR. 

“Only new home construction can genuinely help relieve the inventory shortage, and housing starts need to rise at least 50 percent from current levels,” Yun said. “Most local home builders are small businesses and simply don’t have access to capital on Wall Street. Clearer regulatory rules, applied to construction loans for smaller community banks and credit unions, could bring many small-sized builders back into the market.”  

via inman.com

Fannie Mae sees housing upturn as ‘intact’ | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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Despite some bumps in the road, the housing upturn is “intact” and rising home prices are expected to boost household net worth and offset fiscal tightening, according to a monthly economic outlook released today by economists at Fannie Mae.

Tight inventories continue to restrain sales of existing homes. Although the number of homes on the market grew by nearly 10 percent from January to February, the 1.94 million homes for sale represented a 19.2 percent decline from the same time a year ago.

Pending sales of existing homes dipped 0.4 percent from January to February, but remained at their second-highest level in nearly three years, according to the National Association of Realtors. 

New-home sales also slipped from January to February and builder confidence was down for the second month in a row in March. But housing starts reached a near five-year high in February and new-home sales climbed 12.3 percent year-over-year.

Fannie Mae economists project that existing-home sales, which were up 9.4 percent last year, wlll grow by an additional 10.5 percent this year, to 5.15 million homes, and by 6.2 percent in 2014, to nearly 5.5 million homes. Sales of new single-family homes are expected to post even stronger growth — 15.1 percent this year and 44.1 percent in 2014.

via inman.com

Dryer vent do’s and don’ts | Cross River NY Real Estate

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t sometimes happens that one of my columns will spark lots of questions from readers, as was the case with a past column on dryer venting.

Judging from the questions I’ve received, there’s apparently a lot of confusion and misconceptions about the subject of dryer venting, and a lot of people are struggling with misinformation that they’ve been gathering from friends, the Internet or other sources.

So it seemed like a good time to revisit this topic, and clear up a few misconceptions:

Misconception No. 1: It’s OK to vent the dryer directly into the house, so that the air can be used as either a source of humidity or a source of heat.

via inman.com

Feel better, accomplish more | South Salem NY Real Estate

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series. Read Part 1, “Work smarter by honing your mental focus.”

Would you like to know which time of day is your most efficient and when you are least likely to function well? Would you be willing to spend 26 minutes a day to obtain a 34 percent improvement in your performance? If so, the latest brain research has some surprising findings that can help you make the most of every single minute of your working day.

Recover up to one-third of your workday

Part 1 of this series looked at how Broadman’s Area 10 (an area of the brain known as “Mother” in the neuroscience community) is incapable of multi-tasking. Instead, Mother requires 0.7 seconds to shift from one task to another. This finding, substantiated by numerous studies, means that it is impossible to multi-task. In fact, the research substantiates that most people spend up to one-third of their day recovering from interruptions.

via inman.com