Daily Archives: September 13, 2013

One-Foot-Wide Path to Hamptons Beach Sells for $120,000 | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Ordinarily, when Suffolk County, New York, takes over a small piece of land for back taxes, they like to sell it off cheap. As in, maybe ten bucks. But when the little piece of land is a path that leads to a beach in the Hamptons … well, things may take a different course, reports Newsday (“Bidder buys 1-foot-wide strip of Napeague land for $120,000,” by Mitchell Freedman).

Reports Newsday: “The battle royale began after Suffolk — which acquired the wooded ribbon of land in 2003 for nonpayment of taxes — tried to sell the property in Napeague to any of the six adjoining land owners for $10. Four of the owners didn’t respond to the offer to submit a bid but the other two were so interested the county set up a face-to-face auction and imposed a $1,500 minimum bid.”

Marc Helie (of Manhattan firm Chevalier Investments, LLC) and Kyle N. Cruz (a managing director at Centerbridge Partners LP in Manhattan) jumped quickly to bids of $5,000, $12,000, and $17,000. Cruz folded after Helie saw his $115,000 and raised it to $120,000.

The parties aren’t talking about what they saw in the slender property. But SuffolknCounty official Wayne R. Thompson commented: “I gathered one guy really did not want the other one walking over his property to the water.”

 

 

http://www.jlconline.com/home-prices/

YouTube playlists: a cool way to expose listings | Bedford Realtor

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Video has become an integral part of the real estate business. Have you ever considered how you could use this powerful tool over and beyond property tours, self-promotion and sharing the lifestyle in your market area? Are you willing to take the plunge and explore? According to Alexa.com, YouTube is currently the third most visited site in the world.

It ranks second worldwide in terms of average amount of time spent on the site, second only to Facebook. Consumers love video. In fact, they are much more likely to pay attention to your marketing messages when you attach a video. If you would like to reach more consumers and convert more listing appointments into signed listings using YouTube, here’s how to do it: Imagine that you have five listings in a single market area. You would like to find a way to market all five listings to local residents.

The challenge is that you don’t have their email addresses, door knocking is a chore, and using the backs of the brochures to market additional listings works only when someone stops by your brochure box. You can now market all five listings with a single URL from YouTube.

The secret is to set up your own personal YouTube channel. This is a powerful way to stand out from the competition. Furthermore, only a small percentage of agents have made the transition to integrating video into their business. Even fewer have created their own channel, and virtually no one is using the playlist feature as a marketing tool in conjunction with traditional mailing programs. I discovered the playlist tool on YouTube when I wanted to load 12 excerpts from our new agent training program into a separate YouTube channel.

Since I had already set up a YouTube channel with my name, YouTube would not allow me to create another channel, even when I tried using a different email address. I then noticed that YouTube had a feature that allowed me to aggregate multiple videos into a playlist attached to a single URL.

The process was simple. First, create your videos. Second, select the ones you want to include in your playlist. Third, name the playlist. Fourth, upload the videos into the system. YouTube then generates a URL that will allow you to play all the videos from a single link.

The feature works the same way you would create a playlist in iTunes.

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http://www.inman.com/2013/09/03/youtube-playlists-a-cool-way-to-expose-listings/#sthash.oqTJLbpy.dpuf

Inside Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s ‘French Chateau via the Pacific Coast Highway’ | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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house-front.jpgPhoto by Roger Davies/Architectural Digest

When you’re really rich and beautiful and build a much-whispered-about 14,000-square-foot acid-washed limestone mansion from scratch, there’s no better place for a big reveal than the glossy pages of Architectural Digest. Despite an early slipup by the builder, who released photos of the project prematurely, the magazine continued apace and published New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen’s  new “French chateau via the Pacific Coast Highway” in its October issue.

The story, which dropped online this morning after editor in chief Margaret Russell made a Today Show appearance, makes clear that it’s actually “normal” home. None of those “lavish pleasure dome replete with sultry sirens and gridiron gods cavorting around the pool” nor “sprawling palace staffed with a battalion of liveried footmen proffering protein shakes on silver trays,” writes Mayer Rus. Rather, there’s just the regular plebeian driveway that “leads over a pond to a motor court paved in reclaimed cobblestones and then to a stone bridge spanning a koi-stocked moat that’s picturesque but not pompous”; an unassuming pool “laid out with two straight sides and one long, sinuous edge that helps give the impression of a nautral lake, particularly in the early-morning and late-afternoon light”; and just your average “custom-made wrought iron monkey bars” in the gym. Bündchen sums it up: “I want to live in a place that feels like a real home, where you can put your feet up on the couch and just relax.”

It was important for the Bündchen, whom interior designer Joan Behnke describes as an “earth mother”—”she’s drawn to certain things because of the energy they give off”—that the home incorporate as many reclaimed materials as possible, from the decking and floorboards to the tiles, bricks, doors, and marble fireplace surrounds. Well we have great post to read about choosing best decking supplier. In addition, composting, gray-water technology, solar panels, and eco-friendly construction materials were all factored into the overall design, which was completed by architect Richard Landry. (Brady tells Rus that he’s “all about team dynamics and putting the right people together,” presumably while huddling.) The neutral interiors are filled with pieces from RH and Christian Liaigre, Loro Piana fabrics, Tai Ping carpets, custom pieces, and, of course, a black-and-white photo of Gillette Stadium hanging over the fireplace in the master bath. Check it out below—and head to Racked National for a look at Bundchen’s utterly insane closet.

http://curbed.com/archives/2013/09/04

U.S. homeowners underwater on mortgages falls in Q2 -CoreLogic | Bedford Corners Homes

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Rising home prices drove down the number of U.S. homeowners struggling with underwater mortgages in the second quarter, leaving 14.5 percent of residential properties with a mortgage in negative equity, a report from CoreLogic showed on Tuesday.

The rate was down from 19.7 percent in the first quarter, 22.3 percent a year ago and 26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, which was the most since CoreLogic began keeping statistics earlier that year.

Negative equity, another term for underwater mortgage, refers to properties whose value is less than what is owed on the mortgage.

Negative equity rates spiked in the aftermath of the housing crisis, which began in earnest five years ago and set off a multi-year free-fall in prices. But recovery in the sector over the past year has helped improve some homeowners’ standings.

There were 7.1 million underwater homes in the second quarter compared with a downwardly revised 9.6 million in the first three months of 2013, CoreLogic said.

According to the S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas, prices were up 12.1 percent in the 12 months to June.

“Price appreciation obviously had a positive impact on home equity over the first half of 2013, especially in the second quarter,” CoreLogic Chief Executive Anand Nallathambi said in a statement.

About 3.5 million homeowners regained positive equity in the first half of the year, the report said.

Nevada had the highest percentage of properties in negative equity in the second quarter at 36.4 percent. Rounding out the top five were Florida, Arizona, Michigan and Georgia.

 

 

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/09/10/usa-housing-corelogic-idINL2N0H513I20130910

NAR survey reveals stark differences in tech use by firm size | Chappaqua Real Estate

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Most Realtor-affiliated real estate brokerages have a single office, are independent, and use fewer technology tools than their larger brethren, according to a report released today by the National Association of Realtors. The report, NAR’s 2013 Profile of Real Estate Firms, includes the results of an online survey fielded in August with 6,671 responses from Realtor executives at real estate firms nationwide.

Results were broken down by whether a firm specialized in residential or commercial brokerage and by the size of the firm: one, two, three, or four or more offices. Eight out of 10 real estate brokerages surveyed operated out of just one office — employing a median of two full-time licensees.

Only 8 percent of brokerages had four or more offices. In terms of technology, the largest firms reported that 20 percent of their customer inquiries or business leads and an equivalent share of the firm’s sales volume were generated from the firm’s website, and that 5 percent of leads and sales volume came from social media.

By contrast, single-office firms reported 10 percent of their leads and sales volume came from the firm’s website and that less than 1 percent of both came from social media.

While more than 90 percent of all firms reported using a multiple listing service website to market their firm’s listings, single-office firms were less likely than the largest firms to use any other websites for marketing. This includes NAR’s official website, realtor.com, which is used by 90 percent of the largest firms but only 78 percent of the smallest firms.

 

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http://www.inman.com/2013/09/10/nar-survey-reveals-stark-differences-in-tech-use-by-firm-size/#sthash.dOm0ob4B.dpuf

Mold Problem Dogs Jersey Shore | Armonk NY Homes

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Mold is a familiar problem in homes, traceable to ordinary water sources such as a damp basement, plumbing problems, or roof or window leaks. But Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge inundation was a whole different scale of water intrusion — and, according to the Asbury Park Press, it left behind a whole different scale of mold problem (“Sandy left Shore properties with a massive mold problem,” by Todd B. Bates and Jean Mikle).

“Superstorm Sandy flooded tens of thousands of New Jersey homes, businesses and schools,” the paper reports, “and longtime home inspectors say the state’s mold problem is the biggest they’ve ever seen.”

With whole stretches of the barrier islands closed to residents and contractors alike after the storm, homes sat wet for weeks or even months, giving mold an uncontested hold (see “Sandy Aftermath: Jersey Shore Struggles with Shattered Infrastructure,” Coastal Connection 11/14/2012).

“Many people tried to get rid of mold on their own or hired professionals or other contractors to clean up. But many people did not have the knowledge, tools, or equipment to properly remove mold, which frequently returned,” reports the Asbury Park Press. “Mold also resurfaced after some contractors completed their work. And some contractors vastly overcharged homeowners. Moreover, many people still don’t know they have a mold contamination problem, according to experts.”

 

 

 

http://www.jlconline.com/mold/