Daily Archives: May 17, 2013

How Much House Can You Get for $50,000? | Katonah NY Real Estate

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There’s a lot $50,000 can buy — from a new car to a college education — but rarely does a new home top the list.

Before you rule out being a homeowner for less than six figures, check out these houses on the market for around $50,000. You might find a diamond in the rough.

Trenton, TN

612 S Brownsville St, Trenton, TN 38382
For sale: $57,000

Trenton, TN_2
If you can picture yourself sipping tea in this 1946 Cape Cod-style home, Trenton may be the place for you. Known for its annual Teapot Festival, the town has lots of character and affordable homes. For $57,500, you can get 5 bedrooms and 3 baths on more than half an acre.

Neillsville, WI

205 Hewett St, Neillsville, WI 54456
For sale: $54,900

Neillsville, WI

Less than 30 miles from Marshfield, this 3-bed, 2-bath home includes an updated main bath, hardwood floors, new carpeting and built-in storage. While it’s currently being rented, the 1960 construction is in good condition, priced well below the Neillsville median list price of $99,900.

Mullens, WV

515 Church St, Mullens, WV 25882
For sale: $50,000

Mullens, WV

Built in 1941, the previous owners of this home have maintained its architectural charm. Step inside and find beautiful hardwood floors, an original fireplace and an updated kitchen. The 3-bedroom, 2-bath home also backs up to the Guyandotte River, a tributary of the Ohio River.

Oak Grove, KY

1021 Poppy Seed Dr, Oak Grove, KY 42262
For sale: $57,000

Oak Grove, KY

This $57,000 home has curb appeal with flower beds and a recent coat of paint, indicating the interior is in good condition. Located in Oak Grove adjacent to the Fort Campbell Army base, the house has 5 bedrooms and 2 baths measuring 1,217 square feet.

 

How Much House Can You Get for $50,000? | Zillow Blog.

Tips, Tricks for Keeping Groundcover Under Control | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Groundcovers done right can help protect the soil from the sun’s heat, reduce evaporation, replace turf grass in shady locations, prevent wind and water erosion, and help control weeds. The wide variety of low-growing groundcover plants available can add interest to your landscape thanks to unexpected texture, color or form.

Groundcovers are a great addition to a garden, when done right.

Groundcovers are a great addition to a garden, when done right.

But groundcovers gone wrong can smother out other garden plants, jump fences and invade natural habitats. In fact, the very traits that make some plants popular ground covers – the ability to spread quickly and grow anywhere – are the same ones that have earned them reputations as menaces,
Even worse, once groundcovers reach the problematic stage, many are incredibly difficult to get rid of. Groundcovers such as lippia, and English ivy can be pulled out, but any bit of root or stem that you leave behind will sprout again, meaning eradication must be an ongoing process.

Because established groundcover is so tough to remove permanently, you don’t want to think of it as a temporary landscape decoration. These tips should help you maintain a healthy relationship with your groundcover – allowing it to grow where it should, do what it should, and not stray from its intended spot.

ground cover- digs 2

Groundcover is a great addition to this walkway.

1. Research, then plant. Read gardening books specific to your region and talk with the pros at your local nursery. Plants that are labeled “spreads rapidly” and “grows anywhere” may be clues that the plant could become a problem.

2. Anticipate the spread. When buying a groundcover, read the label – specifically the section concerning mature height and width. Plant according to these guidelines, understanding that your plants’ growth could exceed prescribed dimensions.

3. Consider your site. If you just have some gaps in an already-prepared garden bed, use annuals and tender perennials to fill in. Save ground covers for tough sites where you have trouble getting other plants to grow, such as spaces under trees or on steep slopes.  Select groundcovers, according to your yard’s conditions: Sun or shade? Clay soil or sand? Moist or dry? Select groundcovers that will thrive under your conditions rather than require heroic measures to keep them alive.

4. Steer clear of invasive ground covers. Invasive plants out-compete other species for water, nutrients, sunlight, and space. As a result, invasive species can displace native species, reduce plant diversity, alter ecosystem processes, and hybridize with native plants. Most state agriculture departments and county extension offices work to educate people about local invasive plants. Talk to them and ask if there are groundcover plants you should avoid altogether. The lists will vary from region to region. In the Portland, Oregon, area, for instance, Lesser celandine, Italian arum, Yellow archangel, Lamium, Creeping Jenny and Vinca are all considered invasive groundcovers. In the San Francisco Bay area invasive groundcovers include Iceplant or Hottentot fig, Licorice plant, Vinca and English ivy or Algerian ivy.

5. Be prepared. Once you select your groundcover, control existing weeds and test the soil for pH and fertilizer recommendations before planting. Till the soil to a depth of 8 to 12 inches incorporating any fertilizer and lime needed, as well as, a 2- to 4-inch layer of organic matter such as pine bark mulch or compost. If the site is on a steep slope, you may need to apply netting to help reduce soil erosion. Groundcovers are capable of providing long-lasting beauty and function, but their performance is only as good as the effort one puts into soil preparation.

 

Tips, Tricks for Keeping Groundcover Under Control | Zillow Blog.

NYC unemployment rate hits 4-year low | Bedford NY Real Estate

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New York City’s unemployment rate last month dropped to the lowest level in four years, led by gains in employment and health services, the state Department of Labor said in a monthly report Thursday. If you need to file for unemployment you can visit the unemployment office.

The jobless rate fell to 8.4% in April, compared with 8.9% the previous month, reaching the lowest level since March 2009, the labor department’s seasonally-adjusted figures showed. The city added 16,400 jobs last month, according to seasonally-adjusted numbers provided by Barbara Byrne Denham, chief economist for real estate investment firm Eastern Consolidated.

“It certainly looks like strong private-sector job growth,” said James Parrott, chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute. “That’s very positive, and clear.”

About 4,500 new jobs were created in the employment services sector, a sign that job gains will continue in the near future, Ms. Denham said. Employment services includes temporary hiring, which usually lead to permanent positions at the companies where workers are assigned, she said. Employment in the industry has grown 8.6% this year, the most of any sector.

An additional 3,100 jobs were added in health and social services, and the securities industry gained 1,000 positions. All growth took place in the private sector, as the federal and local governments shed 1,700 employees combined.

 

NYC unemployment rate hits 4-year low | Crain’s New York Business.

Colorado foreclosure filings plummet | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate

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Foreclosure filings in Colorado dropped a dramatic 41.3% in the first quarter of 2013, the Denver Post writes.

Citing data from the Colorado Division of Housing, the publication noted that 4,571 foreclosure filings were reported, down from 7,785 a year earlier.

 

 

Colorado foreclosure filings plummet | HousingWire.

50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and Management | Bedford Corners Real Estate

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Use these platforms to manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives.

50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring Analytics Management 2013 50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and ManagementTo succeed in today’s connected world, you need to build a community around your company, brand, and products. Over the last decade, social media monitoring has become a primary form of business intelligence, used to identify, predict, and respond to consumer behavior. Listening to what your customers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about you is key to getting great results from your social media campaigns. There are countless tools out there, offering many ways to analyze, measure, display, and create reports about your engagement efforts.

These 50 tools distill data in ways that are relevant to your social media marketing plan, enabling you to figure out how to succeed with your audience.

Determining which tools are right for you requires a clear definition of your objectives. Some are real-time, highly customized dashboards that enable you to manage multiple accounts, use shared work spaces, and respond on multiple social networks with one click. Others are simple, effective, and lightweight, and provide the right amount of functionality.

  1. Alterian/SDL ($) | Alterian is now SDL, an integrated platform that blends the marketing analytics, campaign management, and social media capabilities from Alterian with those of SDL.
  2. Argyle Social ($) | Identify and engage with more prospects, qualify and quantify better leads, and build and maintain stronger relationships by linking social media actions to the marketing platforms you’re already using.
  3. BackTweets (Free) | Track how many people are talking about you, who’s talking, and what they’re saying. You can search through a tweet archive for URLs sent via Twitter, including results for full URL links, shortened URLs, and URLs without the “www” prefix.
  4. BlitzMetrics ($) | Social media dashboards for your brand that monitor content across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and more. It helps you benchmark against your competitors, learn which demographics are the most active, and track content performance so you can improve your reach and engagement.
  5. Bottlenose ($) | A tool that provides live social intelligence by analyzing activity across all the major social networks. Use it to search, monitor, analyze, target, and engage in real time, all from one place.
  6. Brandwatch ($) |This service reads through and summarizes what’s being said on the Web about brands, people, and products. Define keywords to track (brands, topics, people names, products) and get access to mentions,  trend and campaign analysis, and competitive info.
  7. Buffer (Free and $) | An app that manages multiple Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, with the ability to set a tweeting or updating schedule unique to each. Includes detailed analytics for all your posts.
  8. Buzz Equity ($) | Listen to social media conversations in real time from various social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news, forums, reviews, and video websites.
  9. CARMA ($) | Evaluate your overall social media image, brand recognition, message penetration, competitive positioning, and areas of strength and weakness, and use the data to develop a strategically sound and effective communication strategy.
  10. Collective Intellect ($) | This Oracle platform captures millions of conversations a day across multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. It extracts sentiments, preferences, and intentions from those sources and displays the information in real time.
  11. Crimson Hexagon ($) | Tap into social media conversations with listening tools that help you understand how the most engaged consumers think and feel about your brand, why consumers are choosing other brands over yours, and how your ads/marketing are really perceived by your audience.
  12. Curalate ($) | This tool applies advanced image analytics to social media conversations to give you detailed insights for your initiatives on Instagram and Pinterest.
  13. CustomScoop ($) | Track media coverage, listen to social conversations, monitor your competition, measure PR and marketing effectiveness, and get automated daily reports.
  14. CyberAlert ($) | Monitor 100,000+ consumer-generated media sites for word of mouth, including Twitter, blogs, Usenet (there’s a blast from the past :), and video sites.
  15. Facebook Insights (Free) | Facebook’s built-in tool provides Facebook Page owners with metrics around their content. Helps you understand and analyze trends within user growth and demographics.
  16. Fliptop ($) | A customer intelligence platform that uses publicly available information, including social data, to score leads so you can prioritize your pipeline, better target your audience, and know more about your customers.
  17. Google Alerts (Free) | Get email updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web, news, etc.) based on your queries.
  18. Gorkana ($) | This tool searches through and filters conversations to provides insights into the most relevant conversations about your brand. Offers audits and reports plus daily social media alerts.
  19. HootSuite (Free and $) | A social media management system that enables teams to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one dashboard. Includes audience identification tools, the ability to streamline workflow, and custom reports. I use HootSuite to manage my company’s Twitter account.
  20. Icerocket (Free) | A free resource for brand monitoring, it taps the Web, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, and delivers easy-to-read results in one page.
  21. Klout (Free) | A tool that finds the influencers in your audience so you can target and empower them to become advocates for your brand.
  22. MarketMeSuite ($) | A dashboard similar to Hootsuite and TweetDeck, it can be used to manage and market on multiple social profiles, schedule messages, use geotargeting, and more.
  23. MediaMiser ($) | Web app that collects and analyzes relevant content about your brand from social, traditional, and digital media. Spots trends in media coverage, including sentiment, share of voice, and top regions.
  24. MediaVantage ($) | Pulls traditional media coverage and social media mentions into a database that helps you monitor your reputation, align your teams and messaging, and measure results.
  25. Meltwater ($) | Combines social media monitoring and analytics with social engagement tools to help you create targeted marketing campaigns and build  brand relationships.
  26. Mention (Free to $) | An iPhone and Android app that lets you create alerts for your company, its keywords, your brand, and your competitors. Updates in real time.
  27. NetBase ($)| A social intelligence platform that enables you to monitor, understand, react, engage, and publish through both owned and earned channels.
  28. Netvibes (Free and $) | A platform that tracks clients, customers, competitors, and your reputation across media sources, analyzes live results with 3rd party reporting tools, and provides media monitoring dashboards for brand clients.



Read more: http://www.pamorama.net/2013/05/12/50-top-tools-for-social-media-monitoring-social-media-analytics-social-media-management-2013/#ixzz2TXwAxlvA

 

 

50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and Management | Pamorama | Social Media Marketing Blog.

Monthly Inventory Rises for First Time in 33 Months | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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The number of homes for sale in April inched 1.6 percent higher than in March, the first month-over-month inventory increase since June 2010, according to the April RE/MAX National Housing Report.

The months supply of homes for sale at April’s pace of sales was just 3.6 months, the lowest supply since the RE/MAX report began in August 2008.   Closed transactions and median prices both remained 10 percent higher than last year’s levels, signs of a strong housing recovery in regions across the country.  Low inventories contribute to a limited growth in sales, preventing some buyers from closing on the home of their choice.

“April was exactly what we needed at this time in the housing recovery.  Home sales and prices continued to rise, while we started to see improvement in the number of homes for sale,” said Margaret Kelly, CEO of RE/MAX, LLC.  “It may take a few months, but as prices rise and more homeowners gain positive equity, we should see an increase in the inventory of homes for sale, resulting in a much better selection for potential homebuyers.”

The April RE/MAX Housing Report showed an 8.1 percent increase in closed transactions over March and a 10.5 percent increase over sales in April 2012, making April the 22nd month in a row experiencing higher sales than the same month in the previous year.  Real estate agents across the country are reporting increased traffic and expect the upcoming summer selling season to be even stronger than last summer. Of the 52 metro areas surveyed in April, 41 reported higher sales than April 2012, and 25 reported double-digit gains, including:  Honolulu, HI +53.2 percent, Burlington, VT +40.3 percent, Albuquerque, NM +40.2 percent, Charlotte, NC +39.4 percent, Raleigh & Durham, NC +38.1 percent and Chicago, IL +33.4 percent.

The Median Price for all homes sold in April was $177,200, which was 4.7 percent higher than the median price in March and 10.7 percent higher than the price in April 2012.  For 15 months in a row, the median price has been higher than in the same month of the previous year. Until the inventory balances, home prices should remain higher than those in the previous year. Of the 52 metro areas surveyed in April, four saw their median prices drop below last year’s price: Los Angeles, CA -9.1%, Albuquerque, NM -6.3 percent, Cleveland, OH -1.8 percent and Providence, RI -0.3 percent.

However, a total of 48 metros saw year-over-year price increases, with 21 reporting double-digit increases, including:  Detroit, MI +44.1 percent, San Francisco, CA +42.2 percent, Atlanta, GA +38.9 percent, Las Vegas, NV +31.6 percent, Orlando, FL +24.6 percent and Phoenix, AZ +23.8 percent.

 

 

RE/MAX: Monthly Inventory Rises for First Time in 33 Months | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.

Lending Standards Loosen Up a Little | Armonk NY Real Estate

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FICO scores for approved mortgage applications in April decreased slightly for the fifth consecutive month as lenders turned their attention to financing buyers during the spring buying season.

Average FICO scores for closed mortgages fell from 749 in January to 743 in March, the steepest decline in the critical measure of creditworthiness since last year at this time. The average loan-to-value ratio for all loans rose slightly from 80 to 81 and the front end/back end debt-to-income ratio was virtually unchanged at 23/35, according to the April Ellie Mae Origination Insight Report released today.

The average time to close a loan fell to 46 days from 48 in March for all loans. Purchase loans took only 44 days to close, on average, down from 47 days in March.

Though standards relaxed slightly, approval rates fell. To get a meaningful view of lender “pull-through,” Ellie Mae reviewed a sampling of loan applications initiated 90 days prior (January 2013 applications) to calculate an overall closing rate of 53.2 percent in April 2013, down from 55.1% in March 2013. The closing rate for all loans fell slightly from 56.8 percent in March to 55.1 percent in April. The average rate in 2012 was 49.0 percent.

“The spring buying season appeared to be in full bloom in April with the percentage of closed purchase loans reaching 42 percent last month, up from 38 percent in March 2013 and 32 percent in February 2013,” said Jonathan Corr, president and chief operating officer of Ellie Mae. “The last time purchase loans broke the 40 percent mark was back in July 2012.” In April 2012, the purchase share was 43 percent, virtually the same as it is today.

“The trend toward more relaxed credit also continued in April 2013 as the average FICO score decreased slightly for the fifth consecutive month to 742 in April 2013 from 743 in March 2013,” added Corr. “Pull-through closing rates dropped slightly last month to 53.2% from 55.1% in March 2013. This may be a reaction to interest rates, which had been climbing for the past five months and then reversed course and fell to 3.808 in April 2013 from 3.813 in March 2013.

 

 

 

Lending Standards Loosen Up a Little | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.