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Come plague, storm or bomb, most U.S. states unprepared: report | Armonk NY Realtor
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Daily Archives: December 19, 2012
Biggest technology flops of 2012 | Katonah Realtor
They can’t all be winners.
This is especially true when it comes to technology and gadgets.Consumers can be a fickle bunch and even the best minds come up with the occasional loser.
Although 2012 wasn’t a huge year for gadget flops, those that flopped did so in magnificent fashion.
Facebook’s poor IPO showing was daily news. (As for IPOs, Zynga didn’t do much better.) But Facebook’s Reach Generator flopped as well. A product that would have filled your news feed with more ads, it was killed after six months.
On the marketing side of technology, we saw Oprah use Apple’s iPad to Tweet praise for the Microsoft Surface:
“Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts.
It would have been a hell of an endorsement if she didn’t post it “via Twitter for iPad.”
Here’s some more of 2012’s biggest tech flops.
1. BlackBerry 10
We used to call them “CrackBerrys.”They were everywhere and people couldn’t put them down. Even President Barack Obama was seen obsessing over his Blackberry during his first campaign.
But those days are over.The Blackberry 10 is one of the year’s biggest tech flops because it never released in 2012 as promised. This was supposed to be a comeback year for the Blackberry brand. The promise of a new line of Blackberry was exciting. Now that it’s nearing its newest release date — Jan. 30, 2013 — the Blackberry faithful are getting their hopes up again. But have the rest of us — and, more importantly, the development community — lost interest?
We’ll see when the Blackberry 10 allegedly releases next year, which should totally help them not capitalize on the 2012 Christmas shopping season.
2. Sean Parker’s AirTime
This turned out to be a whole lot of nothing.Airtime was Sean Parker’s response to Chatroulette, a place to meet new people via text-chat, webcam and mic.
As a social video network, AirTime suffered from a stagnant user base despite its $33 million in funding and a somewhat infamous June opening press conference with stars such as Jim Carrey and Alicia Keys — not to mention the blessing of cool comics Jimmy Fallon and Julia Louis Dreyfus.
Parker later said the site was getting only 10,000 active users per day. Despite that anemic performance, he maintains the product will transform how we communicate.
Not yet.3. PlayStation Vita
This is a hard one for me because I truly want the Vita to succeed. It has a ton of cool things going for it: amazing graphics, excellent design and build quality, the promise of a robust online community, and cross-play with the PS3. Still, mine gathers dust.It was well received at launch but it has yet to get the killer app it needs to become a “must have” platform. “Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified” for the Vita could have easily been that title. Instead, it was an absolute mess.
One or two blockbuster games could change this momentum, but I don’t see any on the immediate horizon.
As of now, the PlayStation Vita has become a chilling answer to the question about the viability of handheld gaming consoles in a world filled with game-capable smartphones.
4. Nokia Lumia 900
At the beginning of 2012 Nokia and Microsoft launched their first major phone together in the United States. This may be news to you because almost no one bought the Lumia 900.More people probably have a Zune, which is dreadful news for Microsoft as they try to stop Apple from eating their lunch in the smartphone market.
That’s too bad, because it was actually a good phone — certainly the best Windows phone available when it launched. The unibody design was smart looking and it came with a beautiful 4.3-inch screen and 8-magapixel camera.
But no one cared.
5. 3D televisions
The 3D HDTV was not introduced in 2012, but this is the year it became irrelevant. It was a hot product when seen at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. And it was easy to see why. Who wouldn’t want the “Avatar” experience in their living room?
The answer: Most of us.Despite an estimated 3% adoption rate in American homes, the industry hasn’t given up on 3D HDTVs yet. You’ll still see them on the shelves of most major retailers. But the glasses can be bulky, awkward and (for some folks) can induce headaches. Picture quality varies greatly and their initial price points were too high for most. Expect to see less and less 3D content coming out while these TVs — which are completely capable of excellent 2D performance — decrease in price and profile.
6. Apple Maps
The company Steve Jobs built may be a juggernaut, but even the mighty Apple makes mistakes. Apple Maps was such a fantastic disaster that CEO Tim Cook publicly apologized for it.When Apple revamped its mapping software to replace Google’s maps in iOS 6, it looked good and early reviews were positive. Users, however, quickly discovered it was broken. The Internet buzzed with stories of Apple Maps suggesting routes that would intersect with a 747 at Dulles Airport or send a car careening off the Brooklyn Bridge.
Apparently the years it took Google to assemble and fine tune their product could not be replicated on the fly by Apple’s cleverness and hubris. Fancy new features such as 3D imagery and spoken turn-by-turn directions couldn’t save what was a product riddled with errors.
Talk of big changes at FHA may be just that — for now | North Salem NY Real Estate
Editor’s note: After this story was written, Sen. Bob Corker announced that the Federal Housing Administration has committed to several changes to FHA mortgage programs. In return, Corker says he will support Acting FHA Commissioner Carol J. Galante’s nomination to be FHA commissioner (see Inman News story).
Corker released a letter from Galante, who promised FHA would “move on” several policy changes by Jan. 31, 2013:
- Increase underwriting criteria for borrowers with FICO scores between 580 and 620 by establishing a maximum debt-to-income ratio.
- Increase the down payment requirement and the insurance pricing for loans between $625,000 and $729,000 to protect FHA against loss on high balance loans that are outside Fannie and Freddie conforming loan limits and scale back the government’s footprint in the housing market.
- Place a moratorium on the full drawdown reverse mortgage program to assess its viability after $2.8 billion in losses.
In her letter to Corker, a Tennessee Republican, Galante said FHA is finalizing a letter to lenders that will require borrowers with FICO scores below 620 to have a total debt-to-income ratio of no more than 43 percent to be eligible for processing through FHA’s automated underwriting system, TOTAL Scorecard. Borrowers with DTIs exceeding 43 percent will have to be processed manually, with lenders documenting compensating factors such as a larger down payment or higher level of reserves.
Galante said FHA will raise the minimum down payment on loans between $625,500 to $729,000 from 3.5 percent to 5 percent. Since June, FHA has been pricing mortgage insurance premiums for loans in that range at 150 basis points, instead of 125 basis points. Another premium increase announced in November will raise the premiums to 155 basis points — the maximum currently allowed by law.
The combination of higher down payment requirements and increased mortgage insurance premiums is aimed at scaling back the FHA’s market share of those loans.
The original story appears below:
Imagine the implications for housing markets if any of the following changes to FHA mortgage programs were made in the months ahead:
- Minimum FICO scores for new applicants get raised to 620 from the current 580 for all borrowers.
- Maximum loan limits in high-cost areas are reduced to $625,500 from the current $729,750, or limits are cut to pre-recession levels across the board.
- The entire reverse mortgage (“HECM”) program, which dominates the U.S. market, is shut down for two years.
- A minimum 20 percent down payment is required for anyone seeking an FHA loan within seven years of a foreclosure. Today the standard is three years following foreclosure to qualify for a new loan with a 3.5 percent down payment.
You might assume that drastic changes like these would be long shots under the current administration, but think again. More than a few eyebrows were raised when HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told a Senate committee hearing earlier this month that he was either already considering each of these options, or at least open to doing so.
Huh? Haven’t two consecutive heads of FHA — former Commissioner David Stevens and Acting Commissioner Carol J. Galante — defended the 580 FICO limit for low down payment borrowers, and in fact urged lenders to be more open to such applicants, especially those whose low scores are attributable to recession-era job losses and other unforeseen economic jolts?
Absolutely. So it was a bit of a surprise to hear Donovan tell Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that raising the FICO minimum “is something we are actually looking at. I think it is likely that we take additional steps” on scores as the Obama administration puts together its upcoming budget. “I agree that we need to be looking at perhaps adjusting on the FICO side.”
Donovan also told Corker that FHA is “working on changes” to the three-year minimum time period before applicants who had been foreclosed upon could obtain an FHA loan.
On loan limits, he said he’s in total agreement with Corker that they should be lowered, scaling back FHA’s maximums to where they were before the first economic stimulus legislation passed in 2008.
As to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) reverse mortgage program, Donovan stopped short of endorsing a moratorium on new loans, but said “we do believe we need to make changes” in the program. “We could … create a moratorium,” he said, but only at the cost of “eliminating an option for some seniors” who need to pull cash from their homes.
Following the hearing, HUD officials declined to elaborate further on Donovan’s remarks or on any immediate plans for FHA policy changes. In fairness, Donovan qualified several of his remarks during the hearing.
On FICO scores, he said that the agency continues to believe that some lenders have “overcorrected” in their underwriting by placing high “overlays” — extra fees — on FHA borrowers with scores below the lenders’ own requirements, which tend to be 40 to 60 points higher than FHA’s minimum.
On the issue of the post-foreclosure wait period, he added that what’s needed most is clearer criteria on which applicants represent low risks to the agency, and therefore should qualify for the three-year minimum, and those who represent higher risks. “I would agree that our (current) standards are not clear enough” to accomplish this, Donovan said.
Regarding the HECM program, Donovan also noted that his preference would be to make structural changes that would limit future insurance fund losses, rather than totally shutting it down through a two-year moratorium. In the recent annual independent actuarial report on FHA’s financial status, reverse mortgages accounted for an outside $2.8 billion of the agency’s $16 trillion-plus projected shortfall in reserves.
So what are we to make of Donovan’s remarks to the Senate banking committee? Is FHA pursuing some of this stuff for 2013? Or are other factors at work here behind the scenes?
It’s definitely more of the latter than the former.
HUD has been waiting all year for Congress to pass legislation called the FHA Emergency Fiscal Solvency Act of 2012 (HR 4264), a bill that would give the agency more latitude to raise premiums when loan vintages go sour, strengthen its ability to claw back money from lenders who don’t follow underwriting guidelines, and give it other powers HUD feels it needs to reduce losses and raise reserves.
The House passed the bill in September with strong bipartisan majorities, but the Senate hasn’t taken action. If it doesn’t, the bill dies Dec. 31 at the end of the current congressional session. The Senate also hasn’t voted on the long-pending nomination of Galante to be the FHA commissioner. Donovan badly wants both.
But Republican hardliners in the Senate, including Corker, think the House-passed FHA bill doesn’t go far enough, and they potentially stand in the way of its enactment during the remaining days of this month. Corker has sponsored an amendment calling for a 620 FICO minimum, a two-year reverse mortgage shutdown, lower loan limits and 20 percent down payments for mortgage applicants who experienced a foreclosure during the preceding seven years.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), on the other hand, wants to rush the FHA bill to a floor vote without amendments, which would preclude consideration of the Corker amendment. That’s why the colloquy he had with Donovan might open the door both to passage of the FHA reforms, plus an understanding that HUD would take a hard look at Corker’s proposed changes in 2013.
How all this works out is still up in the air. The Senate is preoccupied with weighty end-of-the-year battles over the “fiscal cliff” and other issues. Sen. Johnson may not be able to rush the bill to the floor without amendments.
But one way or the other, Donovan’s on-the-record public agreements to “work with” Corker and the Republicans on credit scores, loan limits, HECMs and down payments post-foreclosure could have important impacts on FHA customers in 2013 and beyond.
via inman.com
7 steps to protect condo funds from embezzlement | Mount Kisco Real Estate
DEAR BENNY: I have just been elected president of my 200-unit condominium association and have heard that some property managers throughout the country have embezzled association funds. How can we protect ourselves and our money? –Fred
DEAR FRED: First, most property managers are honest and hard-working. Unfortunately, as in every walk of life, there are bad apples, and one such apple casts a negative spell against all such managers.
I would immediately talk with your association attorney, your property manager and your insurance agent. Each will be able to provide you with information that will assist your association in securing its funds.
Here are some suggestions I have developed over the years, especially since I have represented two associations whose property managers stole their money.
- Check out the property manager carefully. Perhaps you should even obtain credit reports on the firm (and the property manager who will be servicing your project); this will, of course, require the permission of the manager, but they should not object if they want your business.
- Keep control of your funds. Generally speaking, there are two pools of moneys in community associations: operating accounts and reserve accounts.
Regarding the operating account, set a dollar figure above which the property manager will need the co-signature of at least one board member on all checks going out of that account. This will, of course, create a burden on both the property manager and the board member who has to sign checks. But, in my opinion, if you want to serve on the board, you should be willing to assume those responsibilities, which will protect the funds belonging to you as well as the unit owners who elected you.
Clearly, there are routine checks that have to be paid on a monthly basis — such as water bills, insurance, and trash collection. If you set a dollar limit based on your monthly needs, the property manager can write checks up to that amount without a second signature. But any checks over that limit must be co-signed by at least one board member. Your bank will give you signature cards and these signature requirements should be spelled out in those documents. Then, the bank will have to honor your request.
Regarding the reserve accounts, they should be in the name of the association only, and only board members should be authorized to sign checks (or transfer funds) from those accounts. If you visit website you will understand how the community associations do not transfer moneys often from reserve accounts; it should not be a hardship on anyone to require that only board members be authorized to have access to those funds.
- Make sure the property management company has adequate insurance covering your association in the event of embezzlement, fraud or other activities that may cause your association a loss. The insurance industry will write “third-party-coverage” bond insurance, which will give you protection in the event of a loss. The amount of the policy will, of course, depend on the amount of the reserves you anticipate you will carry. Some associations have hundreds of thousands of dollars in reserve; clearly, third-party coverage in the amount of $50,000, for example, is woefully inadequate for those associations.
- Ask if the management company has a fidelity bond in place to cover any loss created by its employees. If they do, your association must be named as an additional insured.
- Make sure that you (and not the property manager) hire an accounting firm to give you a full audit or review each and every year. Your association should give a letter of engagement to the accountant, and the accountant should report back to you — and not the manager.
- Make sure that your funds (operating and reserves) are in separate bank accounts in the name of the association. It is absolutely wrong for a property manager to co-mingle funds with other associations, or even with their own bank accounts.
- Perhaps most importantly, insist that the property manager give you and your board members a monthly financial status report, which will include copies of the actual bank statements received by the management company. But, your president or treasurer should also receive a copy of the monthly (or quarterly) bank statement directly from the bank. In the past, those property managers who embezzled money were creating false bank statements on their computer. In one case, although the manager left the association with only $2,000, every month he created a bank statement showing more than $80,000.
I do not believe that property managers will object to the various suggestions I have made, and indeed may have more recommendations of their own.
Community association board members have the power to control as best they can the financial security of association funds, and steps should be implemented immediately while it is not too late.
DEAR BENNY: My husband and I were in Las Vegas and made a horrible mistake in sitting through a time-share presentation so that we could obtain half-price tickets to a show. The presentation was at an office on the Strip.
Unfortunately, I did not research the company before the presentation. The salesman gave only his first name and had no business card; that should have been a clue about the company.
Anyways, he started talking about the time shares at a Vegas hotel, which was running about $52,000 for a two-bedroom. Since we were not interested, the sales manager came out and said there was an issue with our tickets.
While waiting for the tickets, the sales manager starting talking to us about a resale/foreclosure unit at another Vegas hotel.
The cost for a two-bedroom was significantly less, even though it was considered biannual usage. The rest is history as to what happened that afternoon. Later that evening, we found the same two-bedroom unit for $7,000 cheaper and another on eBay for $1.
In addition, we researched the company and found hundreds of unhappy time-share owners. We also read that a class-action lawsuit was filed against the company in November 2011. We immediately sent a rescind letter, while we were still on vacation. We even called the salesman the next day and he told us that “they never cancel.” At that point, we knew we were scammed.
We just received a letter from the company in which they repeated that we are “not the owner/seller of the time-share interest but rather we are an authorized agent acting on behalf of the owner/seller with respect to the resale of the timeshare interest.” Therefore, we are unable to cancel the purchase agreement since the statutory right of rescission applies only to developer sales. Since the purchase is a resale by a nondeveloper owner, the buyer has no contractual or statutory means to cancel the agreement.
Our question to you is whether the company as an authorized agent on behalf of the owner/seller is obligated to tell the buyer that the sale is final and that you are unable to cancel the purchase agreement. While we were finalizing the paperwork, they made sure we initialed the floor plan for the unit. Never did they have us initial any document that we could not cancel the contract nor did they volunteer this information.
The majority of people who attend the time-share presentations are not familiar with real estate law and haven’t even purchased a resale/foreclosure. Does the buyer have any rights to cancel a contract? Is there even a cooling period? Are we stuck with the time share? Shouldn’t we receive some document that we are unable to cancel the purchase agreement? –Thomas
DEAR THOMAS: I have deleted the name of the time-share company that you dealt with, so as to avoid any back-and-forth responses with that company. But if you go to the Web and type in “time share scams” you will find a large number of websites.
I can’t provide legal advice, but suspect that the company carefully complied with existing laws. It has lawyers on retainer who will do their best to keep the company from doing something illegal. Some states provide rights of rescission; others do not. The sale may fall under the federal Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, which does give you the right to cancel after you sign a contract; but again, your attorney will have to provide you the specific answers to your specific transaction.
However, you got caught because you wanted something free — those Vegas tickets. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has posted a number of ways to protect oneself from time-share fraud, and a couple are as follows: (1) be wary of the hard sales pitch; and (2) be wary of too-good-to-be-true claims when it comes to resales.
My suggestion: Don’t make any payments. If you made the mistake of authorizing direct deductions from your banking account, stop that immediately. If you used a credit card to make a deposit, demand that your credit card company cancel the transaction. They will investigate and may be able to help you.
But the bottom line is: Please do not fall for those fast-talking salespersons who promise you the moon. I can assure you that you won’t even get a single star.
via inman.com
Low rates spur uptick in refinancings | Cross River NY Real Estate
“Home affordability has been high for much of the year, as mortgage rates have been at less than 4% for all but one week in 2012, and that trend continued in the period ending Dec. 7 as well,” reported Credit.com.
The news agency attributes sharp upticks in home refinancings to an ongoing wave of record low interest rates.
via housingwire.com
Banks are somewhat confident in safe harbor from homeowner litigation | Waccabuc Real Estate
As regulators complete new mortgage rules, banks are about to get a significant advantage: protection against homeowner lawsuits, writes The New York Times.
The rules are meant to help bolster the housing market. By shielding banks from potential litigation, policy makers contend that the industry will have a powerful incentive to make higher quality home loans.
Click here to read the full story.
via housingwire.com
FHA commits to additional tightening | South Salem NY Real Estate
The Federal Housing Administration has committed to several changes to FHA mortgage programs that, while less drastic than measures proposed by Senate Republicans, will limit the ability of some borrowers with low credit scores to qualify for loans, and raise minimum down payment requirements and premiums for borrowers taking out mortgages larger than $625,000.
The changes are designed to shore up FHA’s reserves after the agency reported a $16.3 billion deficit in a report to Congress last month, raising the specter that FHA will require a taxpayer bailout next year for the first time in its 78-year history.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, announced today that the FHA had committed to change and that in return, he will support Acting FHA Commissioner Carol J. Galante’s nomination to be FHA commissioner.
Corker released a letter from Galante, who promised FHA would “move on” several policy changes by Jan. 31, 2013:
- Increase underwriting criteria for borrowers with FICO credit scores between 580 and 620 by establishing a maximum debt-to-income ratio.
- Increase the down payment requirement and the insurance pricing for loans between $625,000 and $729,000 to protect FHA against loss on high balance loans that are outside Fannie and Freddie conforming loan limits and scale back the government’s footprint in the housing market.
- Crack down on lenders that advertise under the false pretense that borrowers can “automatically” qualify for an FHA-insured loan three years after a foreclosure. Borrowers who have experienced a foreclosure must have re-established good credit and meet underwriting criteria, including the policy change outlined above for borrowers with credit scores under 620. FHA also committed to analyzing whether a foreclosure due to a one-time event, such as a job loss, resulted in a different or better performance than other reasons for foreclosure.
- Place a moratorium on the full drawdown reverse mortgage program, the Standard Fixed Rate HECM, to assess its viability after $2.8 billion in losses.
In her letter to Corker, Galante said FHA is finalizing a letter to lenders that will require borrowers with FICO scores below 620 to have a total debt-to-income ratio of no more than 43 percent to be eligible for processing through FHA’s automated underwriting system, TOTAL Scorecard. Borrowers with DTIs exceeding 43 percent will have to be processed manually, with lenders documenting compensating factors such as a larger down payment or a higher level of reserves.
Galante said FHA will raise the minimum down payment on loans between $625,500 to $729,000 from 3.5 percent to 5 percent. Since June, FHA has been pricing mortgage insurance premiums for loans in that range at 150 basis points, instead of 125 basis points. Another premium increase announced in November will raise the premiums to 155 basis points — the maximum currently allowed by law.
In normal housing markets, FHA is only allowed to guarantee loans of up to $271,050. But in high-cost markets, FHA is permitted to insure loans of up to 125 percent of the median home price, up to a limit of $729,750.
Congress boosted loan limits for FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008, after the secondary market for “jumbo loans” not backed by the government collapsed. Before the ceilings were implemented, Fannie and Freddie’s “conforming loan limit” was $417,000 in all but a few high-cost markets.
While Congress allowed Fannie and Freddie’s loan limits to slip back to $625,500 last year, it restored FHA’s ability to insure loans of up to $729,750 in high cost markets through 2013.
That means FHA is the only option for government-backed loans of $625,500 or greater. Borrowers can still obtain “jumbo loans,” but can expect to pay higher rates because lenders must keep them on their books.
The combination of higher down payment requirements and increased mortgage insurance premiums is aimed at scaling back the FHA’s market share of those loans.
Galante said she would “move on these additional actions by January 31, 2013” but did not give an exact date for when the changes would take effect. An FHA spokesman confirmed the letter’s authenticity, but said no further information was available.
Galante said she had confirmed that the Obama Administration will support these new policies.
Corker, a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said that as a result of Galante’s committment to these FHA reforms, he will drop his opposition to her bid to become FHA commissioner.
“While this is only a first step, I am encouraged that Acting Commissioner Galante has committed to structural reforms that we both believe put FHA in a much stronger position. Given the reforms she is committed to, I believe that having an accountable commissioner with her resolve and expertise will be in the best interest of the taxpayer,” Corker said in a statement.
Last week, Corker announced he had sponsored an amendment to FHA legislation calling for a minimum credit score of 620 for all borrowers, a two-year shutdown on the entire reverse mortgage program, a maximum loan limit lowered to $625,000, and 20 percent down payments for mortgage applicants who experienced a foreclosure during the preceding seven years.
via inman.com
Asians Lead Ultra Luxury Foreign Invasion | Katonah NY Real Estate
Nearly twice as many homes priced over $10 million were sold to Asians as Western Europeans in the US last year, while buyers from the Americas dominate a far greater share of the international sales for all price tiers than either Asians or Western Europeans.
Of the 28 percent of international buyers measured by a recent Coldwell Banker International Previews survey of its agents, 39 percent come from Asia and only 20 percent come from Western Europe. Coldwell Banker did not break down its data by country of origin.
Asians have been gaining in their share of all price ranges but are not nearly as dominant as the lower tiers as they are in the ultra luxury category, as reported by last June by the National Association of Realtors in its annual Profile of International Home Buying Activity. According to the NAR report of all price ranges, market share of purchases by buyers from China, Japan and India have increased from 12 to 18 percent since 2007. Chinese purchases alone have risen from 5 to 11 percent of all foreign sales in the last five years. During the same period, purchases by Europeans have increased from 19 percent to 14 percent.
Buyers from North, South and Central America continue to dominate all international purchases, account for 35 percent of all international sales in 2011. But for homes priced over $1 million, buyers from the Americas trail Asians and Europeans, except in Miami. According to Helen Jeanne Nicastri, a Coldwell Banker International Previews specialist in Coral Gables: “At least half of the buyers in Miami are international, and are specifically coming from Latin America-including Brazil,Venezuela, Mexico and Argentina.”
Coldwell Banker Previews International also released rankings of top luxury zip codes.
Top Ten Markets by Zip Code: Listings Over $10 Million
ZIP code City/ State Number of Listings
90210 Beverly Hills, CA 19 81611 Aspen, CO 13 93108 Santa Barbara, CA 13 90077 Los Angeles, CA 9 33139 Miami Beach, FL 7 94027 Atherton, CA 7 06830 Greenwich, CT 6 90265 Malibu, CA 5 90049 Los Angeles, CA 5 94115 San Francisco, CA 5 Coldwell Banker Previews International 2012
6 Lessons From the Social Media World Forum | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
If you go to as many social media conferences as I do, sometimes it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to give for having my associate at Renegade, Merlin Ward share the six unique lessons he gleaned from the recent Social Media World Forum (SMWF) conference in New York City.
1. Pair Your Social with Ads
Chris Thorne, Vice President of Social Media & Media at EA, the sports game developer, found that content was more effective when coupled with Facebook advertising. They put extra care into creating content that users could “play” with, essentially gamifying their Timeline; then they made the monetary spend to promote it to as many users as possible. The result was more than just extended reach—they increased virality and sales.
2. Your Content Doesn’t Work Everywhere
Morgan Baden, Director of Social Media and Internal Communications for the book publisher Scholastic, shared their failures and successes with Pinterest. Pinterest is a natural social network for this brand, but they found that not all content is created equal. While female users enjoyed sharing book covers and special quote memes from books, photographs for events and other physical spaces didn’t attract the same interest. It seems that content made for collecting does the best on Pinterest, while amateur point-of-view photography is better left on the shelf.
3. Branch Out Beyond Your Brand
Felicia Yukich, Manager of Social Media Worldwide for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, discovered the secret to using social media in the hospitality industry. The fundamentals of hospitality – thinking about your guests’ stay in and outside of the hotel – translates well into social media. Therefore, Four Seasons curates content far beyond the hotel brand, such as wedding planning ideas, sight seeing destinations and recreational activities. They get into the minds of their audience and focus on their interests, just like a good concierge would do.
4. Build Social Into Your Product
In keeping with one of the conference themes, Jesse Redniss, Senoir Vice President of Digital at USA Network, noted that social works best when it’s anticipated in the product creation phase. Brands should leverage natural user behavior by building social sharing into products and providing seamless social activity around their brands online. The consensus was that users are going to be social anyway, so why not enable them?
5. There is NO Crisis Plan
Morgan Johnston, Manager of Corporate Communications at Jet Blue, and Paul Fox, Director of Corporate Communications at P&G, talked about addressing crisis as a brand. The short of it is that there is no cure for crisis, but brand openness speaks volumes. P&G invited bloggers to their shop to talk about anything they wanted and write anything they wanted—good or bad—after negative news surfaced around a certain product line. After a dramatic employee exit, Jet Blue posted on their website that they didn’t know any more than anyone else about the situation but were trying to find the answers. These clear and open lines of communication helped bring the correct information to light in the end.
6. Brands Can Talk to Other Brands
Shane Steele, Director of Sales Marketing at Twitter, shared examples of brands talking with each other, which, in turn, created viral content and brand adoration by users. Oreo and AMC had a Twitter exchange about sneaking snacks into theaters, and Taco Bell and Old Spice had an exchange about their “spicy” ingredients. These conversations were both genuine and humorous and left the door open for consumers play along.
What real estate trends suggest for 2013 | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate
As 2012 comes to an end, most real estate professionals sit on the edge of their seats, anticipating the outcome of the fiscal cliff and how it will affect the housing market going into 2013.
However, there are real estate trends, both nationally and locally, from 2012 that may indicate what is expected in 2013, according to the latest trend data released by Realtor.com.
Inventory was a huge player in 2012, with the total U.S. for-sale inventory falling 45% since its peak in 2007 to 1.674 million units for sale. The median age of the inventory dropped as well, down by 11.4% since November 2011. These numbers indicate supply-and-demand playing a big role moving into 2013, at least for the first half of the year.
On a local level, markets that were the epicenter of the housing crisis continued to gain momentum while the Midwest and Northeast areas — typically more industrialized — continued to falter. States such as Arizona, California and Washington ended the year with dramatic drops in inventory and significant price appreciation of at least 10% year-over-year.
Click on the image below to see the greatest year-over-year inventory reductions.
Conversely, markets in states such as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, which gained little price appreciation, did not experience dramatic inventory change. Only five areas saw a year-over-year increase in for-sale inventory including Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Philadelphia, Pa., and Shreveport, La. This increase in inventory indicates a continued weakness in both their housing markets as well as the local economy.
Richard Green, director of USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, believes the housing inventory will even out in 2013.
“I was surprised at how good 2012 turned out to be,” Green told HousingWire. “As prices go up, you’re going to see fewer and fewer people underwater on their houses. They are going to feel more and more free to sell their houses.”
Green also offered advice to real estate professionals who may be unsure about what the next few months will bring to the housing market.
“The fiscal cliff is overhyped. If we go over it, we go over it. It’s not a cliff, it’s a slope.”
This reiterates a report released by Barclays on Monday indicating that if the fiscal cliff were to hit, the housing industry would likely slow, but not enough to a point where it would become particularly vulnerable to a sharp contraction.
Additionally, Doug Duncan, chief economist of Fannie Mae, said Tuesday, “Despite unsteady macroeconomic conditions, we anticipate housing and mortgage activity to gain momentum in 2013.”
via housingwire.com