The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the economy is losing strength and repeated a pledge to take further steps if the job market doesn’t show sustained improvement.

The Fed took no new action after its two-day policy meeting. But it acknowledged that economic activity had slowed over the first half of the year, unemployment remains elevated and consumer spending has weakened.

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Policymakers repeated their plan to hold short-term interest rates at record low levels until at least late 2014.

Most economists say the Fed could launch another bond-buying program at its September meeting if the economy doesn’t show improvement. The goal of the program would be to drive down long-term interest rates and encourage more borrowing and spending.

The statement was approved on an 11-1 vote. Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, dissented for a fifth time this year.

The statement was nearly identical to the one issued after the Fed’s June meeting, expect for language noting slower growth. The Fed repeated that strains in the global market pose a significant risk to the U.S. economy, the housing market is improving but remains depressed and inflation remains tame.

U.S. economic growth slowed to an annual rate of just 1.5 percent from April through June, down from a 2 percent pace in the first quarter.

Fed officials have signaled in speeches their concern about job growth and consumer spending. And Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress last month that the Fed is prepared to take further action if unemployment stays high.

Worries have also intensified about Europe’s debt crisis and whether the U.S. economy will fall off a “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year. That’s when tax increases and deep spending cuts will take effect unless Congress reaches a budget deal.

The U.S. Labor Department releases the July jobs report on Friday. Economists forecast that U.S. employers added 100,000 jobs in July. That would be only slightly better than the 75,000 a month from April through June and still down from a healthy 226,000 average in the first three months of the year. The unemployment rate is expected to stay at 8.2 percent.

The Fed has already pursued two rounds of purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

The Fed has also extended a program called Operation Twist. Under this program, the Fed sells short-term Treasurys and buys longer-term Treasurys. The goal is to lower longer-term interest rates.

Even if the Fed launched a third round of bond purchases, few think that further lowering long-term rates would provide much benefit to the U.S. economy. Most businesses and consumers who aren’t borrowing now aren’t likely to change their minds if rates slipped a bit more.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note is already just above its record low of 1.39 percent, which it touched last week. The national average rate for a new-car loan barely tops 3 percent. And the average on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell below 3.5 percent last week for the first time on records dating back 60 years.

Some regional Fed bank presidents have expressed concern that expanding the Fed’s investment portfolio beyond its current record $2.9 trillion to try to lower rates more would heighten the risk of high inflation later.

Some analysts have also suggested that the Fed might be reluctant to act aggressively as the November election nears, out of concern it could be seen as affecting the vote.

The exterior and interior of the Riverdale home

An elaborate Riverdale home built in 1928 by the head of the New York Theological Society in preparation for the second coming of Jesus Christ has hit the market for $14.99 million, according to Streeteasy.com and the listing broker.

The 15,000-square-foot Chapel Hill Mansion estate, at 360 West 253rd Street, is set upon 2.3 acres of land, with seven bedrooms, seven full bathrooms and five half-bathrooms. It was designed to house the Christian savior once he returned to earth to judge the living and the dead, said listing broker Sean McPeak of Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The property was previously owned by Manhattan College, which had planned to use it as dormitories or a seminary, but is now in the hands of a private owner who is an attorney. The property is available as a land lease but a deal could be struck for the land itself, McPeak said.

“The price has to be right,” he said, if the buyer is to purchase the land, available for an undisclosed amount.

The property is elaborately decorated, McPeak said, with marble floors imported from the Vatican, chandeliers acquired from the Plaza Hotel, and original hand-carved marble fireplaces. One of the fireplaces is an exact replica of a fireplace in the White House.

It also has modern conveniences, including a full gym, sauna, conservatory and a terrace with a hot tub boise. If you’re thinking of buying a portable hot tub then there really is a wide range of tubs to choose from, and maybe surprisingly some of the best inflatable hot tubs are made by less well known manufacturers, here’s a blog post on intex portable hot tubs.

While the property is in Riverdale, “it’s not really a Riverdale property,” McPeak said, referring to the quality of the property’s interiors. “It’s more of an international listing.”

The broker said he expects the property to be picked up by a foreign buyer. Messiahs are also welcome to apply

Here’s a listing you don’t see every day: an airport. Curbed spotted Prudential Douglas Elliman brokers Paul Brennan and Ronald White listing the Montauk Airport for $18 million. The property, at 428 East Lake Drive, is 37 acres, with a 3,200-foot long runway, a main office with a bath, a 1,620-square-foot permanent hanger and four portable ones. It’s surrounded by a reserve of more than 1,000 acres.

White told Patch.com that the property’s zoning allows residential development, and could be divided into three to six plots. “I think common goal is to preserve the property being airport,” he said. “But the other option is to subdivide it and to residentialize.”

As previously reported, the Hamptons’ eastern neighbor has seen a rise in popularity of late, with new hotels and restaurants following a growing number of vacationers. But so far, the interested buyers that have emerged are frequent users of the airport, according to White.

NEW YORK (AP) – What will $100 million buy you in New York City‘s real estate market? Apparently, a really good view.

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  By Evan Joseph, AP Photo/Prudential Douglas Elliman

  This photo provided by Prudential Douglas Elliman shows the interior of the 8,000-square-foot apartment for sale on West 56th Street in New York, priced at $100 million.

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By Evan Joseph, AP Photo/Prudential Douglas Elliman

This photo provided by Prudential Douglas Elliman shows the interior of the 8,000-square-foot apartment for sale on West 56th Street in New York, priced at $100 million.

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An exclusive listing is offering an octagon-shaped penthouse in midtown-Manhattan that boasts three floors of living space, panoramic views of the city, six bedrooms, nine bathrooms and a wine room for 1,000 bottles.

And that’s not all.

The 8,000-square-foot apartment on West 56th Street has its own elevator and wraparound terraces on three floors. It is possible to see nearly all the city’s bridges from its 135 windows.

The penthouse is being sold by Long Island real estate developer Steven Klar, who bought it for $4.5 million in 1993 and spent at least as much renovating it.

Klar told The New York Times he has decided to sell it because his 5-year-old son “could potentially get out on the terraces.”

By Evan Joseph, Prudential Douglas Elliman,

This octagon-shaped penthouse at the top of a Manhattan building has its own elevator and wraparound terraces on three floors.

The asking price reportedly is the highest for any New York City apartment currently on the market. A six-bedroom penthouse at One57, a tower currently going up nearby, is under contract for $90 million.

Klar’s triplex, occupying the 73rd through the 75th floors, is the exclusive listing of Raphael De Niro, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman and the son of actor Robert de Niro. He said the terraces offer the highest outdoor residential space in the city.

It is located in CitySpire, a tower that created controversy when it went up in 1988 because the developer built it higher than zoning codes allowed. The city reached a settlement with the developer. There also were complaints from area residents of loud whistling emanating from the tower. Louvers on the top of the building had to be adjusted to reduce the noise.

During the downturn in the housing market in the early 1990s, lenders took the building from the developer. Klar purchased his penthouse after his company, Klar Organization, was brought in to sell the unsold apartments.

Pause for a moment to think. Are you really making the most of your Google+ presence? As in, are you leveraging Google+ for all its lead gen potential? The most organic way to use Google+ to generate leads is by posting compelling content updates that include links back to your website.

And in order for this to work, you need marketing content that will interest your audience and capture their attention. This includes content such as blog posts, videos, webinars, ebooks and whitepapers, reports, and interviews. When you share compelling content on your Google+ business page, you’ll not only engage your audience and generate discussions, but you’ll also drive your followers back to your website where they can read/view the entire resource. And from there, you can convert them into leads!

In this article, which is an excerpt from our new, free ebook, 6 Ways to Generate Leads From Google+, featuring insights and best practices from Google+’s team itself, we’ll walk you through the steps you should be taking to optimize your content updates and improve your organic lead generation from Google+.

Share Compelling Content

First and foremost, give your followers a reason to visit your page! Share content that grabs their attention and fulfills a need/want, whether it be in their family, personal, or professional lives. A data-driven approach to identifying the types of content you should share is to look at your marketing analytics and identify the most popular pages on your website. For instance, in HubSpot’s software, we look at the Landing Page Analytics tool to figure out which marketing offers (e.g. ebooks, webinars, kits, presentations) are most popular. We sort these pages by views and check their conversion rates so we can easily pinpoint the type of content that our audience gravitates toward.

If you haven’t created many marketing offers or you don’t have access to such comprehensive landing page analytics, you can also check out the analytics for your blog. That should give you a good idea of which topics are most popular to your audience. Once you have identified the content that drives the most traffic, use them as fodder to share on Google+. Through this data-driven approach for selecting content, you’ll increase the probability of grabbing the attention of your Google+ followers.

Optimize the Timing & Frequency of Your Updates

Posting all your updates at the same time isn’t going to do anyone any good. You need to space them out; otherwise, your followers’ Google+ feed will get overwhelmed with a sudden flow of content. If you intend to publish 3-4 posts per day, Google explains, make sure you stagger them throughout. This approach is very similar to a marketer’s behavior on other social channels, like Twitter and Facebook.

While there are general industry suggestions for optimal time and frequency of posting, it’s important to test your timing and frequency with your particular audience. You might find that your followers are a bit different in the way they access and engage with information. Look at your target persona(s), and take into consideration their locations, lifestyle habits, and activities. This context will point you in the right direction for discovering when and how often you should be posting content to your Google+ business page.

Google+ Tip: Create a posting schedule, and post an update at least once a day. (HubSpot has even created a customizable, free social media scheduling template to make this process very easy!) The best times to post are between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Remember to +mention (more on this later) others who you may add valuable commentary to your post so they feel the love and share your post with more people.

Learn From Other Successful Companies on Google+

Many companies, like the following two, are making a good use of Google+, using best practices like mentioning specific people in their updates and using hashtags.

Cadbury

The UK chocolate manufacturer Cadbury, which is liked by and in the Circles of close to 2 million people, presents a great case study for using Google+ effectively. Specifically, Cadbury is a good example of how to effectively incorporate hashtags in Google+ updates. You can easily create a hashtag — just start your keyword phrase with the # symbol and don’t use any spaces. While the post below is not designed to directly generate leads for the company, it certainly helps Cadbury increase its following on Google+. Just a few hours after going live, the update had generated more than 140 likes and 60 comments.

 

 

SEOmoz

With its nearly 18,000 +1s and more than 15,000 followers, SEOmoz is another company that shows us a great example of using Google+ updates the right way. SEOmoz is consistent with its use of Google+ mentions. In the example below, SEOmoz has tagged the author of a blog post featured on its website. This adds a layer of personalization, as Google+ followers can learn more about the authority and experts behind SEOmoz’s writing.

 

 

Personalize Your Posts

It turns out that making your posts more personal is a best practice that Google strongly recommends. As we saw with SEOmoz, tagging other Google+ users in your updates is one way to achieve personalization. Let’s look at some other ways:

Mention Other Google+ Users by Adding the + Sign

Simply add a + sign in front of the name of the person who you want to tag, and select the right user profile. By mentioning other Google+ users and pages in your posts, your update will appear in search results when people look for them on Google+. This gives your content even greater reach.

Add Personal Signatures

At HubSpot’s we’ve found that personalized signatures work great in our email marketing. So why don’t you try incorporating them in your Google+ updates? Signing your posts with your name gives your page more personality and enables the user to identify with the people behind your content.

Use Your Own Voice

Be consistent in the language and tone you use across the various different social networks you participate in, as well as on your blog and other marketing assets. Make sure that your voice represents the identity of your company, and also engages your audience so it sparks discussions.

Optimize Visual Content for Lead Generation

Visual content on Google+ can open up a lot of lead generation possibilities. Similar to Facebook’s new timeline design, on Google+, you have the ability to add a cover photo and a profile image to your business page. You can also create albums with visuals, and leverage the ‘Videos’ tab to add clips. The trick — for lead generation — is to always accompany your visual content with a link back to a landing page on your site.

The important thing to remember with visual content and video, is that there are two pieces of real estate to which you can add your landing page link:

1. Add a landing page link to the actual image/video.
2. Add a landing page link to the description of the image/video.

 

By adding links to both of these locations, you’ll increase the chances of Google+ users clicking on the link and visiting your landing page. In other words, you’ll drive more traffic to your website that you can then focus on converting into leads. To make this work, of course, you need to share compelling visual and video content. Google+ recommends sharing exclusive photos and videos with your fans and followers. Don’t forget that you can edit your photos directly in Google+ and can even share animated GIF images — a great way to draw attention to your page.

Now let’s look at a few great examples of companies using the above mentioned lead generation tactics in their visual and video content. We will also cover a few companies that have compelling cover and profile photos to instantly capture the attention of their Google+ visitors.

Adding Links to Image Descriptions

In its public album ‘Trend Update, 2012,’ H&M took advantage of the best practice to include links in the descriptions of its featured photos. The fashion brand not only showcases some of its trendy recommendations, but also tells people where they can learn more about these items and potentially purchase them. “See our latest trend collection at http://bit.ly/OsL5bT,” reads one call-to-action in H&M’s photo album.

 

 

Adding Links to Actual Images

Don’t forget that your visuals themselves can feature links! If you think that the message you’re trying to convey can benefit from a reference to a specific page, then go ahead and feature a URL. This is especially easy to do if you’re using an image of your logo for branding
purposes. Below, check out how The New York Times managed to incorporate a link right beneath its logo.

 

 

Adding Links to Your Videos

In this example, General Electric is featuring a video on its Google+ page. The company is following best practices by including a hashtag in its update and even mentioning specific Google+ users in the comments section. If you play the video, you will see that it features a link to get further engaged with G E— this is their call-to-action. One recommendation
we have for GE is to also include its desired link in the description of the video as they post it on Google+. This would increase the chances of people clicking through and learning more about the stories behind GE.

 

 

Etsy is another company that has shown us great use of video calls-to-action on Google+. In the example below, Etsy showcases its most recent product feature and also links to the page on its business’ website where users can get access to the feature.

 

 

Surprise Users With Unique Visuals

You can also capture people’s attention with some creative and unorthodox visuals. Verizon, for instance, features five individual animated GIFs on its Google+ Page that come together to convey one message. Since this is something new and unexpected in this virtual environment, it grabs the attention of the user and directs them to take a specific action, which in this case would be to check out Verizon Wireless for faster movies, music, and apps.

 

 

Forever 21 is another company that used animated GIFs to make its cover picture stand out.

 

You guys ready for a total snoozefest?

Just kidding.

I doubt any marketer sets out to write boring content when they’re staring at a blank screen, but we’re all probably guilty of it — especially if we work in kind of … ahem … “boring” industries.

Continue reading →

How great would it be if you could target your organic Facebook business page updates by more than just users’ location and language? That’d probably be pretty valuable — and more effective — right? If you’re nodding your head in agreement, we’ve got some great news for you. According to TechCrunch, it looks like Facebook has started rolling out powerful new post targeting options today called ‘Page Post Targeting Enhanced.’

New Facebook Post Targeting Options

Facebook hasn’t released a ton of details about its new targeting options yet, but TechCrunch reports that Facebook page admins will soon be able to target posts to segments of fans by a variety of characteristics in addition to the basic location and language targeting options admins are already used to.

Below is a list of the full set of targeting options that will soon be available to marketers.

• Age
• Gender
• Interested In
• Relationship Status
• Education
• College Grad: College Name, Major
• In College: College Name, Major, Years
• In High School
• Workplace
• In addition to existing options — Language, and Location: Country, State, City

Remember, up until this update, Facebook admins were only able to target their updates by those last options, language and location:

 

According to a post from a page admin who is a member of the closed Social Marketers Facebook Group, a Facebook rep has indicated that the new, ‘enhanced’ targeting options are available to a select number of pages today and will be rolling out to all Facebook pages over the next few weeks.

 

 

Just as with targeting by language or location, we’re told that all updates a page publishes — even if it’s targeted in one way or another — will still appear on the business’ Facebook page timeline. However, targeted updates will get displayed in the news feeds of only the appropriate users being targeted.

In other words, if HubSpot chose to target only females who are at least 20 years old for a specific post about Cyndi Lauper performing at our upcoming Inbound conference (it’s true!), that post will be visible to males visiting HubSpot’s Facebook page, yet that post wouldn’t appear in males’ news feeds.

More Targeting Options Means Better Facebook Marketing!

Face it — having more targeting options can only lead to better marketing. We already know how much more effective segmenting your email communications can be because it allows you to tailor your content and messaging to different audiences. Consider HubSpot’s own research, in which we found that targeted and segmented lead nurturing emails generate an 8% click-through rate compared to general email sends, which generate just a 3% click-through rate. Furthermore, Jupiter Research reveals that relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. Now imagine what better targeting can do for your Facebook marketing!

For example, if you’re a clothing store that sells to a wide range of ages — from teens to baby boomers — you could target updates about your new line of sparkly, pink tube tops much more appropriately, crafting your message language and copy accordingly and filtering out older generations from seeing that update in their news feeds. Or, if you owned an online dating site, you could target your updates only to Facebook users with relationship statuses of “single,” “divorced,” “separated,” “it’s complicated,” “widowed,” or “in an open relationship.” Pretty savvy, huh?

Despite lagging sectors like real estate and construction, the number of jobs in New York City is rising, according to analysis released Wednesday by the Real Estate Board of New York. Much of that gain comes from industries such as retail and hospitality.

At the end of June, total employment in all five boroughs hit 3.87 million, up 2.9% from January, according to REBNY’s analysis of data from the New York state Department of Labor. That rate of expansion actually is slightly above the 22-year average of 2% for the first half of the year.

Michael Slattery, REBNY’s senior vice president, attributed much of the recent uptick to the city’s growing stature as a tourist destination. The number of retail jobs in New York in the first two quarters rose 2.9%—a multiple of the 22-year average retail growth of 0.5% in the period. There are currently 328,700 retail workers in the city. Similarly, the leisure and hospitality industries were among the biggest job growers.

However, though there were job gains in the first half of the year, the city’s unemployment rate still jumped to 10% in June, from 9.7% in May, according to state Dept. of Labor data cited by Crain’s New York Business. The discrepancy between such job growth and unemployment figures has perplexed economists.

“Some opportunities for retailers were created out of the ashes of 2008, and people started to spend more money again,” Mr. Slattery said. He noted that Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 49th streets has seen robust rental activity in recent years, as stores such as H&M, Zara and Urban Outfitters have moved in. The gilded strip of Madison Avenue above East 57th Street has also witnessed a comeback.

Nationally, retail added more than 100,000 new jobs last year, according to Ellen Davis, senior vice president at the National Retail Federation. The industry has also seen 24 consecutive months of year-over-year growth, she added.

“Seeing two years of consecutive growth is encouraging as companies try to determine whether they’re ready to bring back some of the jobs they lost in the recession,” she said.

As the housing market shows signs of improvement, a looming question keeps repeating: What is the size of pent-up demand? Answering that question is not easy. It requires some counterfactual assumptions, such as “what would be if it wasn’t this?” To answer the question, however, we could look at some trends that persisted prior to the recession and project them forward. Housing demand, among other things, depends on household formation. New households result from adult children leaving parents’ households, singles or families leaving shared housing arrangements and creating their own. As suggested by other research, slowing of household formation has been concerning. While, household formations generally slow during recessionary periods, this recession has created particularly hard situation for new household formation. The situation is especially acute among the younger generation leaving colleges who have, instead of starting their own households, moved back in with their parents.

This article attempts to estimate loss in household formation as a result of the Great Recession. Figure 1 illustrates the household growth in the United States and California since the year 2000. Households here are defined as occupied housing units and data is obtained from the Current Population Survey. What is immediately evident is the drop in the number of households in California, following the housing bust. Across the nation, while household formation slowed significantly, it still continued to grow.

Historically, U.S. households have been growing at about 1.5 percent annually. In 2008, however, household formation rate halted at about a third of a percent. In the following years, household formation was about half a percent. In California, household formation rate has been much less steady. It has oscillated from 3 percent growth in 2004 to a three-quarter percent decline in 2010 and is projected to decline over 2 percent in 2012. On average, though, household growth rate between 2000 and 2008 in California has been about 0.85 percent, less than 1 percent average in the decade prior. Since 2008, the rate has averaged -1 percent.

One way of estimating the housing pent-up demand is to look at what household formation would be at today had there not been for the economic and housing crisis and ensuing slowdown. Keep in mind that this admittedly crude method does not consider the current constrained housing financing situation, unemployment, and other factors limiting formation of a new household. The estimate is illustrated in Figure 2. Total population in California, represented by red line, shows to have continued growing despite the decline in the number of households, represented by the blue line. The growing population also highlights that the issue of slowing household formation is not due to falling population in the state.

The estimate suggests what the number of households would be if they continued forming at the national rate observed after 2008, 0.55 percent. As noted, household growth in California has actually declined 1 percent annually since 2008. Thus, if household formation in California followed the national trend, there would be around 575,000 additional households formed in 2012 (see dotted blue line). These are both owner and renter occupied households. If, however, household formation continued at California rate observed at the beginning of the decade, there would be 696,000 additional households in 2012.

These estimates suggest that pent up demand in California could be large, between 575,000 and 696,000 additional households. And, with owner-occupied comprising on average 58 percent of households, that means between 333,000 and 403,000 fewer owner-occupied homes today.

But, this is not all. We have not taken into account households who are currently renting, but would otherwise choose homeownership. The share of owner-occupied units in California fell by about 2.75 percent from the peak, and the average for the last decade is at 58 percent. While it is difficult to say that homeownership rate should be and what rate it is going to settle at, if it moves from the current 56.2 percent to the average rate (58 percent) in California, there would also be almost 100,000 more home-owners who are currently renters. Lastly, there are those unfortunate homeowners who are currently in a home but would prefer to sell their current home and buy another one. It is difficult to say just how many homeowners are in this situation. Over 30 percent, or over 2 million, of California’s mortgages are under water. Not all of these homeowners would necessarily move, but it is safe to assume that many would. While both of these groups add to the pent-up demand, they are not newly created households and they would add to housing supply as well as housing demand.

All things considered, this analysis illustrates the terminating effect the Great Recession has had on the housing demand. And while the uncertainty over foreclosure crisis and economic improvement still lingers, the size of pent-up demand implies that recovery of the housing market could quickly follow any economic recovery.

In each Economic Update, the Research staff analyzes recently released economic indicators and addresses what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update discusses the Case-Shiller home price index.

• Case Shiller data showed that all 20 cities monitored in the monthly index saw home price gains in the month of May. This data is a 3-month rolling average, so what is reported for May is an average of transactions closed in March, April, and May.
• The Case Shiller data confirms the trend observed in other house price measures—prices improved in the spring season and while prices are occasionally still lower than they were one year ago (8 cities saw year over year decline while 12 cities saw year over year gains), the decline is much smaller than before.
• Both indexes were up 2.2 percent in May. The 10-city index was down 1 percent from a year ago while the 20-city index was down 0.7 percent.
• By city, Phoenix had the largest year over year rebound—a gain of 11.5 percent while Chicago showed the biggest monthly gains as prices advanced by 4.5 percent in May (or 2.3 percent after the seasonal adjustment).
• While Atlanta remains the only city still in double-digit decline from a year ago, May data show a rapid turnaround—a gain of 4 percent in one month. This would translate into a gain of sixty percent if that pace were to continue. Even adjusted for the typical spring price boost, the Atlanta gain was measured to be 2 percent in May which would translate into a gain of 25 percent in one year. Miami, another city that previously saw a big decline in prices was up 1.4 percent in May and 3.4 percent from May one year ago.