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Daily Archives: April 22, 2011
LoHud Reports Westchester Real Estate Slump – Rockland Soars | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
The Lower Hudson Valley real estate market continues to present a mixed picture as sales of single-family homes fell in Westchester — but rose in Putnam and Rockland — in the first quarter.
Median home prices also dropped by 7.8 percent in Westchester County and 0.3 percent in Rockland County, though they rose 12.6 percent in Putnam County, figures released Thursday by the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors show.
Local Realtors caution that the new numbers are being compared with the first quarter of 2010, when the market received a boost from federal homebuyer tax credits, which spurred a flurry of activity.
“New York City is coming back strong, and certainly we are related to that market,” said Michael Graessle, president of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors. “As the job market improves, we are seeing more and more buyers.”
The outlook among consumers is more positive than it has been for the past three quarters, said Donald Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute, which released a poll Thursday.
“Consumers are feeling better than they have been,” Levy said. “It’s a lessening of the pessimism. They believe things are starting to improve.”
The poll revealed that New Yorkers still think it’s a poor time to sell real estate but a good time to buy.
However, the advantage that buyers have over sellers is closing, Levy said.
Indeed, homebuyers and sellers are becoming more sophisticated in terms of price and willingness to negotiate, Graessle said. Some homebuyers have decided to take a small loss on their current home to buy a larger home at a better price.
“Buyers are shopping differently than they used to,” he said. “They are shopping early and narrowing down their searches. We are getting more informed buyers.”
In Putnam, sales are up across all price ranges from $250,000 to more than $1 million, said Don Mituzas, a Realtor with Prudential Douglas Elliman who specializes in northern Westchester and Putnam listings.
That’s a change from first-quarter 2010, when the federal tax credit spurred first-time buyers to purchase starter homes, he said. This spring, he said, he’s had several buyers who either relocated to the area or found jobs in the pharmaceutical industry around Tarrytown.
“People are moving up, downsizing and relocating,” he said.
Realtors also say they think the local housing market is pulling out of the recession. It’s a sentiment shared by New Yorkers, the Siena poll found.
“The sentiment is that we have hit the bottom and we are recovering, but recovering very slowly,” Levy said.
Tide goes out on Hamptons sales, prices | Wow! Low Tide in the Hamptons?
The tide went out on the ritzy Hampton’s housing market in the first quarter with both sales activity and prices dropping steeply from year-earlier levels, according to three reports released Thursday.
The number of homes sold during the initial three months of the year fell 22% from the same period a year ago to 309, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel Inc. A separate report by the Corcoran Group reported a similar 23% drop to 360 homes sold. The dips follow a surge of activity in the final quarter of 2010, both reports said. Each noted that some of those deals would have closed in the first three months of 2011 if buyers hadn’t been afraid that the Bush-era tax cuts would expire at the end of December. At the last minute, the tax cuts were extended for two years.
“The large drop in sales activity was primarily attributable to the rush to close by the end of 2010,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel. “Everyone expected the tax cut to expire.”
The number of sales in the first quarter was down 23% from the previous quarter, according to Miller Samuel’s report. Meanwhile, both the median sales price and the average sales price dropped, by 23% to $900,000 and by 22% to $1.9 million, respectively. Brown Harris Stevens reported a similar decline in average price, 21%, to $1.4 million during the first quarter.
Even sales of the Hamptons’ most prized houses—those valued at upwards of $5 million slowed during the first quarter. There were just 15 sales for more than $5 million each, a little more than half of the 28 sales that were logged in the same quarter a year ago, said Mr. Miller, who began tracking this segment of the Hamptons market after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008. During the fourth quarter of last year, 38 houses sold for more than $5 million each.
The market share of homes sold for more than $1 million also shrank to the second-lowest level in seven years, Mr. Miller said. Sales of $1 million-plus homes represented 19.8% of all sales during the quarter, versus 39.7% the same time a year ago. This segment of the market hit an all-time low in the fourth quarter of 2008, when $1 million-plus homes made up just 17.6% of all sales in the Hamptons.
“Everyone took a breather earlier this year,” said Paul Brennan, Hamptons regional manager at Prudential Douglas Elliman, adding that the bad weather may have also played a part in dampening sales. “Everyone was sluggish.”
But that has recently changed, said Mr. Brennan, adding that he is starting to get emails and phone calls again. He personally has three $20 million deals in Sagaponeck and Southhampton, one of which recently closed.
“There will be a burst of activity during the second quarter,” said Mr. Miller, noting that Wall Street compensation, a big driver for the Hamptons sales market, is up 5%. Inventory is also at modest levels, another good sign that the market is stable. During the first quarter, inventory rose a mere 3% to 1,689 homes.
Cia Comnas, executive managing director of Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons, also predicts improvement in activity. “There has been a nice pickup in activity in the high end. Everything is looking good, and we expect those transactions to be reflected in the second-quarter numbers,” she said. “Properties that are well priced are attracting multiple buyers. There are bidding wars.”
Keeping Up With the Social Search Wars : Inbound Marketing Strategies
Seth’s Blog: Improving the trains
« Hungry or guarded | Blog Home
Improving the trains
While making the trains run on time is a good thing, making them run early is not.
If you define success as getting closer and closer to a mythical perfection, an agreed upon standard, it's extremely difficult to become remarkable, particularly if the field is competitive. Can't get rounder than round.
In general, purple cows live in fields where it's possible to reinvent what people expect.
Posted by Seth Godin on April 22, 2011 | Permalink
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Rehabbed REOs spend less time on market
Rehabbed REOs spend less time on market
Investors perform fix-up work that banks can't afford to do
By Steve Bergsman, Friday, April 22, 2011.
Most Realtors recommend sprucing up a home before putting it on the market, because a nicer-looking home sells quicker. The same theory permeates the foreclosed, or REO (bank-owned real estate), sector.
A recent study undertaken by a national field service company that works on REO properties not only confirmed what was at most an empirical belief among Realtors, but accentuated the difference between rehabbed and nonrehabbed properties.
Ironically, all this proof of purpose comes down at a time when the banks have not only slowed the rehab of REO properties, but also constrained the pipeline of REO properties for the open market.
Field Asset Services Inc., an Austin, Texas-based property preservation and REO asset management company, for two years now has surveyed foreclosed and REO properties comparing number of days on market (DOM) for remodeled properties versus those that are not remodeled.
In the company’s initial study two years ago, rehabbed properties spent 54.6 percent fewer days on market than unrehabbed properties. In its most recent study, published earlier this year, results showed a dramatic 68 percent reduction in DOM for properties that underwent rehabilitation.
For the present study, FAS tracked 17,252 properties across 13 states. The average DOM for the properties represented without rehabilitation was 222.8 days. This number dropped significantly for properties with rehabilitation to 69.8 days.
"When a home looks better, it sells faster," said Javier Zuluaga, director of sales and marketing for Home Repairs and Remodeling (HR&R) LLC in Tempe, Ariz. And the banks believed that to be true, too, because starting in 2008 they were paying HR&R about $7,000 to $12,000 to do basic rehabs on REO properties: clean, make ready the pool, replace the carpet, and replace or repair cabinets."
The banks still believe in rehab; nevertheless, that business has gone away.
"What happened was," Zuluaga explained, "the banks could not keep pace with the down-spiraling prices. So, sometime around 2009, the banks simply said, ‘We are not going to put all this money into it. We are just going to get the properties cleaned up and if it is missing cabinets, it is missing cabinets — that’s just the way it is.’ "
Zuluaga added, "When we rehabbed, homes did sell quicker, but it got to the point where the banks realized they were putting money into the homes but were not getting their price points back. The homes were selling but the banks just ran out of funds."
Field Asset Services has also seen its business decline.
"Business started to decline around last October and has not kicked back up," said Dale McPherson, president of FAS. "Our business is down about 25 percent."
That drop-off is attributed more to congestion at the banks rather than the expenses of rehab.
Mortgage servicers are having to redo their foreclosure compliance work sometimes three or four times in order to get a property into foreclosure.
"What has happened is the average foreclosure time frame has gone from seven months in 2008 to 18 months today," McPherson said. "The pipeline is bundled up. At some point, it has got to unravel — it has to!"
The REO market has definitely bifurcated between owner-occupant buyers and investors, and the two markets vary immensely.
About the only dependable financing for buyers who want to live in the property they are acquiring are those insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which is a division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. To get an FHA loan, the prospective home has to meet minimum standards.
"To buy, you have to be able to finance through HUD because until recently there has been no other financing available, as there is very little conventional financing," said McPherson.
"In order to sell to a HUD buyer, you have to have a move-in property. It has to pass HUD’s appraisal standards. You can’t buy a property ‘as is.’ You can’t buy a property that doesn’t have working appliances, missing countertops or chipped paint."
On the other hand, investors prefer the beat-up home. They pay cash, try to close quickly and will take care of rehab themselves.
According to Zuluaga, "the investors are making the margins that the banks are not making now," which is good business for companies like HR&R.
"The private guys are hiring us; they are buying these homes at a very low price and hiring us to do the remodeling," Zuluaga said.
When a cash buyer steps in, he is going to expect the (mortgage) servicer to "take a haircut," McPherson said.
Then comes the remodeling. Investors are either going to fix the homes up and resell, or fix it up and lease. The key for investors is getting the proper valuation to ensure, at minimum, a least a dollar-for-dollar return on the investment.
Investors have to do a valuation on both repaired and as-is sales, because that’s how they determine their repair margin. For example, a home is worth $90,000 as is, but after repair could be sold for $100,000. The owner, bank or investor gets a repair bid, which comes in around $7,000. The margin of $3,000 is generally enough to go ahead with the repairs.
"I would contend," McPherson said, "based on our results, you are still going to sell the house faster — even if it is only a dollar-for-dollar return — if you fix it up. In a market such as Phoenix, where there is an immense amount of foreclosed homes, you might see five or six REO properties on the same street. If you want to compete, you need to have the best-looking house on the block."
Steve Bergsman is a freelance writer in Arizona and author of several books. His latest book, "After the Fall: Opportunities and Strategies for Real Estate Investing in the Coming Decade," has been ranked as a top-selling real estate investment book for the Amazon Kindle e-reader.
Contact Steve Bergsman: Letter to the Editor
Copyright 2011 Inman NewsAll rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.
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Home selling tips for accidental landlords
Home selling tips for accidental landlords
Real Estate Tax Talk
By Stephen Fishman, Friday, April 22, 2011.
Due to the precipitous decline in the housing market over the past few years, many homeowners who would otherwise sell their homes are renting them out. This may be because prices are too low, or because they have to move before they can sell due to a job change.
Such accidental landlords should understand that if they rent out their homes too long before they sell them, they could lose the biggest tax break available for most people: the home sale exclusion.
Homeowners who qualify for the home sale exclusion don’t have to pay any income tax on up to $250,000 of the gain from the sale if they’re single, or up to $500,000 if they’re married and file a joint return. Of course, this exclusion is useful only for homeowners who have equity in their homes, not the millions who are "under water" and will receive no profit if they sell their homes.
To qualify for the exclusion, a homeowner must satisfy the ownership and use tests. This means that during the 5-year period ending on the date of the sale, the homeowner must have:
owned the home for at least 2 years (the ownership test), and
lived in the home as a primary residence for at least 2 years (the use test).However, the homeowner need not be living in the house at the time it is sold. The two years of ownership and use may occur anytime during the five years before the date of the sale.
This means that a homeowner can move out of the house for up to three years and still qualify for the exclusion. Moreover, a homeowner can rent out a home and count that time as ownership time.
This rule has a very practical application: A homeowner may rent out a home for up to three years prior to the sale and still qualify for the exclusion. However, the exclusion works a bit different for homeowners who have rented out their homes.
They cannot exclude from their income the part of their gain equal to the depreciation they claimed (or could have claimed) while renting the home. Moreover, if the home is rental property at the time of the sale, the sale must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service on Form 4797: Sales of Business Property.
Example: Connie purchases a house on Feb. 1, 2007, and lives in it for two full years. She then moves to another state to take a new job. Rather than sell the house in a down market, she elects to rent it out.
If she sells the house by Feb. 1, 2012, she’ll qualify for the $250,000 home sale exclusion because she owned and used the house as her principal home for two years during the five-year period before the sale. If she waits even one more day to sell, she will get no exclusion at all.
Thus, accidental landlords who have equity in their homes need to sell them before the three-year rental period expires, or they’ll lose the home sale exclusion. If they can’t or don’t want to sell, they would have to move back into the home to preserve the exclusion.
Homeowners who don’t qualify for the exclusion will have to pay a 15 percent capital gains tax on their gain from the sale (assuming the home was owned for at least one year).
Stephen Fishman is a tax expert, attorney and author who has published 18 books, including "Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Contractors, Freelancers and Consultants," "Deduct It," "Working as an Independent Contractor," and "Working with Independent Contractors." He welcomes your questions for this weekly column.
Contact Stephen Fishman: All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.
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Best garage door for your home | Inman News
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series.
Last time, we talked about the various types of garage doors found in older homes. This time, we’ll look at the modern standard for garage doors, along with some tips on choosing the right style for your home’s architecture and highly recommended garage door repair.
Today’s most popular Calgary garage doors type by far is the sectional overhead door, which comprises four or five horizontally hinged sections that roll up into the garage ceiling on a curving track. There’s little doubt that this is the most easily operated garage door design since the Victorian biparting door — a fact that explains its wide use as a replacement for older types.
First, a quick rundown on sizes: Single-bay doors are typically 8 or 9 feet wide by 7 feet high, while double-bay doors are typically 16 feet wide (occasionally 18) by 7 feet high. Double-bay doors are mainly found on broadly proportioned home styles such as California Ranchers.
As for choosing a door design to suit you home’s architecture: Although the current fashion in sectional doors is for very showy and elaborate designs with raised or recessed panels, ornate windows and the like, these aren’t necessarily the best choice for your home, though you can learn this here now if you keep reading. Ranch-style houses, for example, typically look best with very simple and unrelieved doors, and anything more ornamental can look overwrought, drawing attention away from the front entrance. If your garage doors need to be fixed, get a garage door repair raleigh services to ensure that your home is safe.
Read Part 1:A brief history of the garage door On the other hand, a bland, unadorned garage door will look very strange on a traditional home style. The best approach is to reflect the same general level of detail that’s found on your home: If you have a traditional-style house with lots of exterior moldings and trim, then a modernly ornate garage door will probably look fine. However, if it’s a relatively clean mid-century home style, you’re better off choosing a simpler door with a plain plywood finish.
Pre-Depression-era homes, which were originally fitted with either biparting or bypassing garage doors, present a special case. The horizontal proportions found on most stock sectional doors, whether plain of fancy, look foreign on houses of this era. Door manufacturers do offer super-high-end designs that attempt to hide the sectional door’s telltale horizontal joints, mimicking old-fashioned bypassing or biparting doors. But the prices of these doors can be astronomical, sometimes ranging into five figures.
Therefore, if the original doors are still in place, you’re probably better off reconditioning rather than replacing them. And regardless of what naysayers tell you, an automatic garage door opener can indeed be installed on biparting doors by a garage door contractor like Action Garage Door (they’re even occasionally installed on the inner leaf of bypassing doors). So, if you’re interested in finding out more about Action Garage Door, you can find their website here.
Lastly, a word about windows: Most sectional door manufacturers offer optional glass transom lites for their doors, as well as a whole array of muntin (divider) patterns to fit over them. Although additional light in the garage is always welcome, choose these window designs carefully. The now over-familiar sunburst pattern, for example, is very well suited to Colonial-style houses, but not to much else. Likewise, arch-topped windows are probably not the thing for a California Rancher.
Take your time choosing the right style of garage door for your home — after all, it’s the biggest, baddest door you’ve got.
Read Arrol Gellner’s blog at arrolgellner.blogspot.com, or follow him on Twitter: @ArrolGellner.
Email Review: Trulia [Screencast]
I first discovered Trulia in February 2009 when my wife and I were trying to sell our home in Durham, NC. We found our realtor using Trulia and I tweeted Rudy to let him know (and say thanks). Rudy and I ended up connecting and he even blogged about my experience trying to use Twitter to sell our house.
Even though I am not in the market for a new house, I’ve stayed in touch with Rudy and have been receiving the Trulia emails for over two years. I’ve watched as their email campaigns have evolved over time to incorporated Share With Your Network (SWYN) and other social features.
I figured it was about time to review their emails. Below is a screencast of an email I received from Trulia yesterday. I break down the anatomy of the email from the subject line to the preheader to the main call to action. I share what I like as well as offer some suggestions for Trulia. Note: The suggestions provided do not take into account actual results nor do they factor in Trulia’s email marketing goals as I don’t know either.
Check out the screencast below and let me – and Trulia – know what you think.
Having trouble seeing? Try going directly to YouTube.
If you are interested in viewing other Email Reviews I’ve recently done, including Backcountry.com, Burton Snowboards, McCormicks Spices, or HootSuite, they are all on Screenr.
Would you like a free review of a recent email you’ve sent? Leave a comment below and I’ll connect with you. Note: We are working on a more formal process to submit emails for review. Stay tuned!
DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory
At Blue Sky Factory, we strongly believe that, if used properly, email marketing and social media go together like Batman & Robin. If effectively implemented, email marketing can power social media and social media can power email marketing.
Good news! We have an eBook that provides 16 tips to use email and social together.
What are you waiting for? Download the eBook now!
Tags: Email Review
This entry was posted on Friday, April 22nd, 2011 at 7:02 am and is filed under Email Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
