Daily Archives: June 21, 2013

New York luxury real estate is booming | Bedford Real Estate

Yolanda Barnes, director of research for Savills, an organization that focuses on international real estate, comments:

There’s a great deal of interest in New York, which is seen as relatively cheap compared to other global cities.” As such, foreign investors who are looking for a new home, who need a vacation spot, or who work on an international level and want to set up a home base in the United States, are turning to New York City as a wonderful place to invest in luxury real estate at a fraction of the cost when compared to the price tags associated with other global locations, such as London.

 

New York luxury real estate is booming | HousingWire.

Surging home sales stir new housing bubble fears | Pound Ridge Real Estate

There are differences between this run-up in prices and the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis, said Gary Thomas, theNational Association of Realtors president.

“The boom period was marked by easy credit and overbuilding, but today we have tight mortgage credit and widespread shortages of homes for sale,” Thomas said. The improved housing market and mortgage rates still near record lows, despite a recent rise in rates, is pulling buyers back in the market faster than it’s prompting sellers to put homes on the market. Buyer traffic 29% above a year ago, but the supply of homes for sale is actually down 10%, writes CNNMoney.

 

Surging home sales stir new housing bubble fears | HousingWire.

Home construction climbs 5% in May: McGraw Hill | Chappaqua Real Estate

At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $495.7 billion, new construction starts in May advanced 5% from April, according to McGraw Hill Construction.

Much of the uptick came from nonresidential building, which registered moderate growth for the second month in a row after its sluggish performance at the outset of 2013.

During the first five months of 2013, total construction starts on an unadjusted basis were reported at $187.6 billion, down 3% from last year.

Residential building advanced 3% in May to $206.8 billion.

Single-family housing also edged up 2% in May, the company noted.

The rate of activity for single-family housing continues to be high by recent standards, with May up 26% from the average monthly pace during 2012.

By geography, single-family housing in May revealed gains in the Midwest, up 6%; the West, up 5%, and the South Atlantic, up 2%, respectively.

 

Home construction climbs 5% in May: McGraw Hill | HousingWire.

Forget about Marketing: Concentrate on Blogging | Armonk Realtor

Well, recently it seems like a lot of bloggers fancy themselves as marketers. You can’t read a post on a blog without seeing a load of other bloggers commenting at the bottom, with a link back to their own site. Of course other bloggers use black hat SEO tricks and other shady tactics in order to drive traffic to their blog. Each to their own you might say, but at the end of the day life can be much, much easier.

If you publish blog content that’s truly awesome, everyone else will market your blog for you.

If you seem to spend half your life trying to promote your blog with your efforts never coming to fruition, now’s the time to stop. There’s a reason why things aren’t working out – and you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s the actual content in your blog posts.

Sorry to have to break it to you, but your blog posts suck.

 

Forget about Marketing: Concentrate on Blogging : @ProBlogger.

Florida’s Foreclosure-fatigued Families Flee | Mt Kisco Real Estate

Some 20 percent of owners of properties making their way through the torturous foreclosure process are abandoning their homes rather than hoping for a miracle or waiting until the bitter end eventually comes.

RealtyTrac released a report today showing that as of June owners had vacated 167,680 foreclosure properties nationwide, representing 20 percent of all U.S. properties in the foreclosure process. These owner-vacated foreclosures are in addition to 544,274 bank-owned homes nationwide that have been foreclosed on but not sold to a third party.

In addition more than 650,000 homes in the foreclosure process have not been vacated by the homeowner but are likely to end up as short sales, foreclosure auction sales or bank-owned sales in the future, bringing total foreclosure-related inventory on RealtyTrac to nearly 1.4 million.

“Efforts to prevent unnecessary foreclosures and mitigate their impact on home values have resulted in a foreclosure process that takes an average of 477 days nationwide, and more than two years in some states – which is holding many of these must-sell properties off the market,” Blomquist said.

“Even if all these homes flooded the market simultaneously they would likely not cause the once-feared double dip in prices given supply constraints from non-distressed sellers and stronger demand. Given these market dynamics, it’s not surprising to see that Florida, Illinois and New Jersey – states with three of the four longest foreclosure timelines – have all had laws take effect in the last six months that speed up the foreclosure process on vacant properties. These laws should help provide some extra supply and possibly help reduce the threat of another housing price bubble forming in these markets.”

Of the total 167,680 vacant foreclosure properties nationwide, Florida documented the most by far of any state, with 55,503, fully 33 percent of the national total. Illinois posted the second highest total (17,672), followed by California (9,802), Ohio (9,723), and New York (9,173).

 

Florida’s Foreclosure-fatigued Families Flee | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.