Daily Archives: June 13, 2013

Energy efficiency improvements could be factored into mortgage underwriting | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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A bill aimed at encouraging home energy efficiency improvements by establishing underwriting guidelines for mortgage lenders that factor in cost savings for homeowners has been introduced — again — in the Senate.

S. 1106, the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy Act of 2013, is sponsored by Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. The bill — which has the support of many real estate industry groups — has been referred to the Senate Banking Committee, where a previous version of the bill introduced in 2011 died.

According to the Appraisal Institute, the bill “would instruct federal loan agencies to assess a borrower’s expected energy costs when financing a house. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would issue updated underwriting and appraisal guidelines for any loan issued, insured, purchased or securitized by the Federal Housing Administration or any other federal mortgage loan insurance agency.”

The bill’s primary features — an affordability test and a loan-to-value adjustment — would both be optional.

Borrowers with energy-efficient homes are significantly less likely to default, according to a study by the University of South Carolina Center for Community Capital.

Homeowners who have invested in energy-saving upgrades may have trouble getting fair value for their homes if those improvements are not recognized by buyers, appraisers and lenders. More than 200 multiple listing services provide “green fields”  that allow real estate agents to list a home’s green features.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/06/12/energy-efficiency-improvements-could-be-factored-into-mortgage-underwriting/#sthash.74lNMu8p.dpuf

 

Energy efficiency improvements could be factored into mortgage underwriting | Inman News.

East Hampton Town Attempts to Rein in Drunken Partiers at Beach | Chappaqua Real Estate

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[photo credit: guest of a guest]

So far, East Hampton hasn’t walled off the parking lot, as was mooted in March, but the town board approved restricted parking access at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett. The party scene was out of control on the beach last summer, with rowdy behavior, urinating in the dunes, and mounds of garbage left behind. The new law would restrict vehicles weighing more than 4 tons, longer than 30 feet or carrying more than eight passengers from parking on Indian Wells Highway, 175 feet south of Bluff Road to the end. Parking will also be prohibited on two roads near Indian Wells Highway from 8AM to 6PM. We’ll see what happens.

 

 

East Hampton Town Attempts to Rein in Drunken Partiers at Indian Wells Beach – drunkhampton – Curbed Hamptons.

How to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Return on Investment | Katonah Realtor

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Have you ever been asked to show the return on investment (ROI) for your social media work?

Have you had trouble giving an exact number to explain your ROI or even set quantitative goals for your social media?

25% of marketers said that their biggest marketing challenge was finding the ROI of their marketing activities.

In this article, I’ll show you how to tweak some of your social media actions with your business goals in mind and make them easier to tie to your ROI.

#1: Use Social Media to Promote Your Offers

Social media is an important channel to promote any content you create. Whether you’ve created an ebook, blog post, webinar or white paper, you should promote it through social media.

Tap into your social audience whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,Google+ or Pinterest.

sme tweet

Social Media Examiner uses Twitter to share content and generate traffic.

As you can see on Twitter, it’s important to link to all of your content with your tweets. And remember to include hashtags to gain further visibility on Twitter.

For other social channels such as Facebook or Google+, take advantage of the visual real estate you have and include an engaging photo.

facebook update

Social Media Examiner adds the image of the report on a Facebook update.

On LinkedIn, post your content in marketing groups that are discussing similar marketing principles.

Is one of your goals for your business to engage potential prospects on social media? Then you’ll want to make sure you use each social media platform in the best way to connect with them.

#2: Tag Your URLs so You Know They Come from Social

Part of tying your social media efforts to ROI is to understand what actually comes from social media. You may be promoting an offer across multiple channels, but without understanding if it’s successful or unsuccessful through social media or another channel, it’s hard to plan future campaigns.

One way to attribute campaigns to social media is to tag the URL so you know it comes from social.

In the example below, you can see that the link was promoted on social media because of the UTM tags in the URL line at the top that say “twitter” and “social.”

buzz feed

Link to landing page coming from social.

A UTM tag allows you to add identifying information to your URL that will help youkeep track of the source the link is coming from. By doing this, you’ll be able to properly track what comes from social media vs. other channels.

Is one of your goals to understand how your social media is working for you? Then you’ll want to be sure to track the traffic that comes from social media to see what’s working and what needs to be tweaked.

#3: Survey Your Customers About How They Found You

Another way to find out where your customers are first hearing about your company is through surveys. Include a question that asks how your customers found your company at strategic points of contact. This will help you find out where your visitors first found your company.

In the image below from Born Free, you can see the options for their survey.

survey question

Here’s an example of a survey that answers the question “How did you hear about us?”

Of course, when you gather this information from your customers, you can use it to tie into measuring your social media ROI. And it can also be helpful when planning which marketing resources should be used more heavily.

Is one of your business goals to get more leads from social media? Then be sure toinclude a tracking mechanism, such as asking your clients where they first heard about you.

#4: Use Google+ to Influence Your SEO Presence

Don’t forget about using one of the newest social media platforms, Google+. SEO consultants have proven that having a presence on Google+, Google Places andGoogle Authorship can help your SEO. And good SEO translates into better online visibility for your business.

In the case of Google Authorship, your content (especially when you upload a picture) may appear at the top of search engine results.

Here’s an example. Twitter announced that it’s opening its advertising platform to all users in the United States. When you search for “social media twitter advertising,” the first article to appear after a New York Times article and sponsored results is an article that is pulled in from Google+ with an image.

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Search results for “social media twitter advertising.”

Also, remember Google pulls in data from social media to make sure that its results are also influenced by social activity.

Appearing higher up on the page on Google’s search results directly influences your business ROI because most people do not click past the first page on Google results. Having your results appear there will drive more traffic to your website.

Is one of your business goals to get more web traffic? Then you’ll want to optimize your presence on Google’s platforms and track how visible your business is in their search engine results.

Use the best social media tactics to tie activity to your ROI.

Remember, you don’t want to fall into thinking that social media is a panacea to cure all of your business’s problems. And don’t expect to see immediate results.

 

How to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Return on Investment | Social Media Examiner.

Heavy Rains, Flood Watch Continue In Mt. Kisco | Mt. Kisco Real Estate

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WESTCHESTER, N.Y. – Westchester remains under a flood watch Thursday while storms continue to dump up to four inches of rain and bring strong winds to the area, according to the National Weather Service.

Thunderstorms with heavy rains and strong winds are expected late Thursday night into Friday morning.  The National Weather Service warns that saturated grounds from recent large amounts of rainfall could make trees and power lines susceptible to falling.

The flood watch began 8 a.m. on Thursday and will continue until 8 a.m. on Saturday.

The storm is caused by a low pressure system, which is expected to intensify as it approaches from Ohio and pass south and east of Long Island by Thursday night through Friday morning.  The low pressure system is forecasted to move out to sea by Friday evening.

Heavy Rains, Flood Watch Continue In Mt. Kisco | The Mt. Kisco Daily Voice.

How to build a better real estate website | Waccabuc Realtor

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In a perfect world, building a real estate website would be a seamless experience: fast, easy and cheap. You would just push a button and customers would start lining up at your door.

If it were only that simple.

Really beautiful and profitable real estate websites are hard to come by. If you want some examples, take a look at a recent post on the Top 25 Beautiful Websites in Real Estate. Sadly, many of those sites are ones that we’ve already seen.

Building a website in this industry has been more like participating in an episode of “Fear Factor.” If you’re not careful, your site can become a financial drain and set your online marketing up for imminent failure. But crafty real estate professionals are starting to learn from the rest of the startup world, using clever ways and new technology to spin up and market their websites without breaking the bank. They’re taking advantage of low-cost and free tools combined with creative marketing strategies to dominate online.

Take a look at the infographic below and see where you can step up your website game. Let me know what’s working for you in the comments below.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/how-to-build-a-better-real-estate-website-infographic/#sthash.wC7Sdq5D.dpuf

 

How to build a better real estate website [infographic] | Inman News.

How to Achieve Fun, Fame and Fortune Blogging | Cross River Realtor

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I don’t know about you but sometimes this blogging gig can be a chore.

Long lonely hours of writing and editing, coming up with the inspiration for the headlines and sitting down to do the work while your friends are out partying. Just getting started is a challenge. What do you want to blog about? Will it work? How do I set up this WordPress technology thing.

Writers block lurks every day. It doesn’t just afflict the beginner but the best. These are some of the challenges that confront us all.

So why should you start and why persist?

Why you should start

When starting, the reasons why are sometimes nothing more than a curiosity driven by a passion for the topic. Sometimes it is the intersection and synergy of multiple motivations. Maybe leave a legacy and learn along the way.

Here are some of the reasons for blogging that I hadn’t really considered when I published for the first time.

Your brand awareness will grow

Open doors to global opportunities

Create business networking opportunities

Position you and your brand as a thought leader and expert

Website will rank higher in search engines

Learn a lot about your business and yourself

Build an online asset that doesn’t sleep

Grow as an individual and as a business

Provide lifestyle freedom

Gain access to free crowd sourced marketing

I am sure there are more but there is something for everyone. Done right it does contain fun, a possible 15 minutes of fame and more and the promise of fortune.

Achieve one of those…then it is worthwhile.

Who has the money?

In looking around it starts to become apparent that there are many ways to make money from new media (blogging). It is not a singular approach but a matrix of multiple opportunities and tactics.

Blogging has evolved rapidly because of the social web and in the past was driven by building email lists which took a lot of time. With the advent of social media their marketing and growth have been supercharged.

Global reach and influence at the speed of a tweet, a Facebook share or a viral video.

To make money from a blog in 2013 you do not have to be a Huffington Post. There are many ways to make a living out of blogging that can enhance your current business and lifestyle that are within everyone’s reach.

Here are 11 different business models in this Slideshare presentation with case studies.

 

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/06/14/how-to-achieve-fun-fame-and-fortune-blogging/#1FIKyx5R19yMQIzW.99

 

 

How to Achieve Fun, Fame and Fortune Blogging | Jeffbullas’s Blog.

In a hot real-estate market, buyers make their pitches personal | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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With painfully few homes on the market and the “sweet” Medford Colonial the perfect place to raise the baby they are expecting, Elizabeth Deutsch and Brian Rosen were determined to vanquish the competing bidders. Not only did they offer $11,000 above the asking price, but they wrote the couple who owned the home a personal note. “Dear Caleb and Autumn,” it began.

 

Small problem: Lisa, not Autumn, is the name of Caleb’s wife. Autumn is their dog, a boxer-terrier mix : beloved, but not a decision-maker in real estate matters.

 

“They got the place anyway,” said their broker, Ed Greable of Keller Williams Realty. “The owners got a laugh out of it.”

 

You would be cheerful, too, if you were a seller in spring 2013. And if you were a buyer, you might also be writing nice notes to sellers.

 

 

With inventory down and prices rising, buyers are exhibiting the kind of frenzied behavior not seen since 2005. It is not enough that they are mobbing open houses, bidding thousands of dollars over asking price, and making all-cash offers. They are going so far as to Google owners and craft pitches in which they pretend to enjoy the same things the sellers do. Family photos are not uncommon.

 

“The garage would be a great place to store my kayak,” one aspiring buyer, a nonkayaker, wrote to a kayaking owner. Some would-be buyers linger at open houses to eavesdrop on the competition. Greable said one client regularly called him from packed open houses. “The vultures are here,” she would whisper.

 

In a hot real-estate market, buyers make their pitches personal – Lifestyle – The Boston Globe.

Housing Prices Are Up, Up, Up in Southern California | Bedford Real Estate

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Housing prices nationwide are up, but in most areas we haven’t seen scary kinds of increases. It’s a different story here in Southern California, though, where home prices have risen 25 percent in the past year:

“We’re deep into uncharted territory,” DataQuick President John Walsh said, citing “razor-thin” inventory, pent-up demand, low interest rates and all-cash purchases by investors and wealthy individuals. “How this all plays out is educated guesswork at this point.”

….Extremely low inventory and mortgage rates have ignited those bidding wars and helped turn the housing market into an economic bright spot — both in the Southland and nationwide. Investors have also played a major role in the recovery that began last year, buying run-down, lower-cost properties to fix up and rent out.

Is this a bellwether for the future—and for the rest of the country? Maybe not. Richard Green, director of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate, thinks prices will ease later in the year for a simple reason: “Ultimately, people don’t have the income,” he says. That’s cheery news, isn’t it?

 

Housing Prices Are Up, Up, Up in Southern California | Mother Jones.

New Home Prices Say What’s Different This Time | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Although no two business cycles are alike, most share some common characteristics. The interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy — housing and manufacturing — tend to lead on the way up and the way down, for obvious reasons. Inflation ebbs during the recession and in the early stages of the recovery. Credit creation drives the upswing.

The recovery from the 2007-2009 financial crisis has been different all around, just as Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff predicted in their 2009 book, “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” It has been a “protracted affair,” featuring extended declines in asset markets, large contractions in output and employment, and an explosion of government debt: three characteristics common to the aftermath of financial crises.

Yet even in the context of the typical post-financial-crisis recovery described by Reinhart and Rogoff, this one has some peculiarities of its own.

Let’s start with housing, whose rise and fall and associated debt were the proximate cause of the crisis. Residential real estate pretty much sat out the first 2 1/2 years of the recovery before getting traction in 2012, with a lot of outside help. The Federal Reserve drove down rock-bottom mortgage rates even more with its purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, a program that continues to this day.

Prices Beckon

The traditional leader was a laggard this time, and improvement has been slow in coming — at least when it comes to construction and sales. Prices of new homes are a different story.

The median sales price of a new single-family home set a record of $271,600 in April, eclipsing the 2007 peak of $262,600. Some of that reflects an increase in median square footage: 2,390 square feet last year compared with 2,235 square feet in 2007, according to annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“They’re clearly not building for first-time buyers,” said Michael Carliner, an economic consultant specializing in housing.

Another part owes to a greater number of sales of higher-priced homes in more desirable areas of the country. The rest is clearly a response to demand for limited supply: Inventories are near record lows while single-family starts are about two-thirds lower than their 2006 peak. Prices of existing homes, on the other hand, are still being constrained by foreclosure and short sales, in which the house sells for less than the amount owed the lender.

 

New Home Prices Say What’s Different This Time – Bloomberg.

High demand, low supply driving up housing prices in Boston | Bedford Corners Homes

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The current housing market south of Boston is hot, with large numbers of buyers driving up prices as they compete for limited numbers of homes, realtors and others say.

“There’s unbelievable pent-up demand,” said Melvin A. Vieira Jr. of RE/MAX Landmark Realtors in Milton. “Everybody is out there. It’s a frenzy because there’s not enough inventory.”

“Properties are selling for full price or above,” said Steve Webster, owner of Success Real Estate in Braintree, which has eight other offices in Southeastern Massachusetts. “We’re getting multiple offers. It’s absolutely insane.”

For example, Webster said a client recently offered $40,000 above the $450,000 asking price for a home in Dedham — and was outbid. The house, he said, was “an average house — nice, but average.”

“It can be discouraging,” he said. “The best advice I can give people is be organized and be ready to make a decision — and bring your checkbook with you.”

In Cohasset, a house on desirable lower Sohier Street came on the market at 8 a.m. on a recent Friday and “we had an offer on it at 10 a.m. for $50,000 over” the asking price of $1.225 million, said Nancy Hamilton of Dean and Hamilton Realtors. The cash sale closed in 30 days, she said.

High demand, low supply driving up housing prices in south suburbs – South – The Boston Globe.