ARMONK, N.Y. – The North Castle Democratic Committee endorsed Michael Schiliro for Town Supervisor for the upcoming November election in this week’s top news.
In other top news this week:
Schiliro To Run For North Castle Town Supervisor Tops This Week’s News | The Armonk Daily Voice.
MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. – Mount Kisco restaurant Village Social Chef Mogan Anthony upcoming appearance on Food Network’s “Chopped” in a June 13 episode topped this week’s news.
In other top news this week:
Mount Kisco Chef’s Upcoming ‘Chopped’ Appearance Tops This Week’s News | The Bedford Daily Voice.
Home prices are rising sharply, but economists speaking at the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference here are not worried about overinflation.
“We are not in ‘bubble trouble,'” said Jed Kolko, chief economist at the online real estate information company Trulia. “Prices are undervalued 7 percent relative to long-term income and rent norms. We see no signs of overbuilding, and few signs of people overborrowing.”
Noting that prices were 40 to 70 percent overvalued during the past decade’s boom, Kolko said, “Prices would have to keep rising at the current rate (10 percent nationally) for several years to reach another bubble.”
Still, “home price growth is widening very fast,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. “The good news is it is lifting people out of being underwater and offsetting the effects” of the government’s budgetary sequestration of funds.
“There is no risk of recession” in the next couple of years, he said.
Yun is concerned, however, that home-price growth is outpacing income growth. When mortgage interest rates inevitably rise, “that will negatively impact affordability.”
Price growth is creating “the haves and the have-nots. Owners are smiling.”
Those who would like to be owners are not.
Putting upward pressure on prices, beside consumer confidence and buyer demand, is that home builders are still producing fewer than the historical norm of about 1 million units per year. New home sales, Yun said, are at 28 percent of the 2006 peak, although he acknowledged that was a period of overbuilding.
Home prices rising, but no ‘bubble trouble’ | HeraldTribune.com.
Double-digit home-price gains from San Francisco to Detroit to Miami have some aspiring home buyers racing back into the market.
But buyers, beware.
The housing market may not be as strong as you think.
Sure it’s tempting to want to lock in a low interest rate and take advantage of lower home prices before they rise further.
But it may make sense to take a breather before you buy a home and wait for prices to drop, as institutional investors might be inflating home prices.
Namely, Wall Street investors are scooping up homes in bulk, and there’s considerable concern this is inflating prices in certain areas of the country—and pricing individuals out of the market in general.
Wesley Bedrosian
These institutional investors have been spending billions of dollars buying up single-family homes en masse. In 2012, institutional buyers purchased about 138,540 of both distressed and non-distressed homes in the U.S., or about 3% of all sales, according to RealtyTrac. It estimates institutional buyers purchased 32,355 homes in the U.S. in the first quarter of this year, or about 3.5% of home sales.
That may sound like a small amount of purchases, but in certain markets institutional investors are taking a larger stake. For example, institutional buyers accounted for 5% and 8% of sales in Arizona and Nevada, respectively, so far this year.
And some of the hottest markets for big corporate buyers from 2010-2012 are seeing some of the biggest price jumps this year—Phoenix, Las Vegas, the San Franciso Bay Area, portions of Florida and elsewhere.
There are concerns we may be headed for another bubble in areas where housing-price gains may not be sustainable, especially if unemployment remains high, interest rates start rising, selling prices peak and investors quickly unload their holdings in bulk, depressing home prices.
“I’d discourage a client from buying in an area with a lot of institutional action in that there might be some uncertainty as to the institutions’ plans with the property,” says Brian Frederick, a financial planner in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Add in a small supply of homes for sale—thanks in part to regulations that limit the pace of foreclosure sales and underwater sellers who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth and are holding out for even better prices—along with pent-up demand from people who have been waiting to move until they’ve felt more economically secure and tight lending standards—and you’ve got the makings of some frustrated, and maybe over-eager, would-be buyers.
Corporate Buyers Boosting Prices in New Housing Boom – WSJ.com.
When author and small business expert Steve Strauss was commissioned to write the third edition of the best-selling Small Business Bible, his publisher asked if enough had changed in the business world since the 2009 second edition debuted to warrant a new installment.
Short answer? Hell yes. “The only social network around when I wrote the last installment was Myspace,” he laughed when he stopped by FORBES this week to discuss the release and a new survey revealing new insights into the ways small businesses should (and are and in many cases aren’t) using social media in their marketing efforts.
“Hands down, the biggest mistake small businesses are making on social media is not using social media,” he says, pointing to a stat from the recent STAPLES study that found that while most small business owners want to use social (in fact, on a wish-list of small biz marketing entrepreneurs rank amassing Facebook FB +1.4% friends above a Super Bowl commercial) and know they should be using social, more than a quarter haven’t considered how it can help their businesses and an equal number consider themselves novices.
To quote Seth Godin, “How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of one of the greatest shifts of our generation,” Strauss writes in his book on the imperative for small business owners to embrace social. To that end, he shared with FORBES three clear
Making Social Marketing Make Sense For Small Business – Forbes.
US Treasury debt prices fell on Friday as investors revived bets that the Federal Reserve could slow its massive bond-buying program later this year after data showed solid if not exceptional employment growth. The yield on the benchmark 10-year note rose for a sixth straight week, the first such gain since late March to early May 2009 when the US economy was bleeding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month during the depths of the recession.
US payrolls rose by 175,000 in May, Labour Department data showed on Friday, more than the 170,000 expected in a Reuters poll but still not enough to suggest an immediate Fed exit from its buying of $85 billion per month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Still, analysts said the number was strong enough that a slowdown in Fed buying could be on tap in coming months as the economy proves resilient enough to stand without this support.
“Our expectation would be that you still could have the Fed – starting in and around September – very moderately reduce the scale of their long-term asset purchase program, which generally has been the expectation of the markets,” Rick Rieder, co-head of Americas fixed-income at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said in New York after the jobs data. But at least one Fed official made clear that he thinks the central bank should already hit the brakes.
Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, a longtime critic of the Fed’s quantitative easing program, told Reuters Friday’s jobs report showed that government spending cuts have not so far been as damaging as some had feared. Still, at 7.6 percent, the US unemployment rate remains above the 6.5 percent the Fed would like to see. And with economic growth sluggish – 2.4 percent in the first quarter – some economists still see a place for the current level of Fed accommodation.
Fed policymakers next meet on June 18-19. In the meantime, the selling in Treasuries was compounded by investors closing Treasuries hedges on their mortgage-backed securities holdings. Any reduction in the US central bank’s third round of quantitative easing, dubbed QE3, will likely increase mortgage rates and slow refinancing, reducing the appeal of mortgage bonds, analysts said.
Treasuries outlook: US bonds drop on renewed bets of less Fed buying | Business Recorder.
Data from the Obama Administration’s May scorecard revealed continued improvement in housing, yet officials warn that a full recovery will still take more time.
“As the May housing scorecard indicates, the Obama Administration’s policies and actions over the last four years to speed housing recovery are continuing to show important signs of progress,” said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs Kurt Usowski.
He added, “In the first quarter of 2013, homeowners’ equity grew by more than $815 billion, reaching its highest level since the first quarter of 2008.”
Annual home prices increased to the highest level since the housing bubble burst in mid-2006, with the S&P Case-Shillerhome price index up from 146.6 in March to 148.7 in April. Year-over-year the index is up from 134.1 in April 2012.
These 95 million people ages 10 to 32 outnumber their baby-boomer parents by 10 million. The young adults among them, sobered by the recession, have relatively modest material expectations; many say they’d be happy with smaller living spaces.
The housing industry will have to convince the next generation that home loans are as necessary and prudent as the student debt so many of them already carry, writes the Los Angeles Times.
Data from the Obama Administration’s May scorecard revealed continued improvement in housing, yet officials warn that a full recovery will still take more time.
“As the May housing scorecard indicates, the Obama Administration’s policies and actions over the last four years to speed housing recovery are continuing to show important signs of progress,” said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs Kurt Usowski.
He added, “In the first quarter of 2013, homeowners’ equity grew by more than $815 billion, reaching its highest level since the first quarter of 2008.”
Annual home prices increased to the highest level since the housing bubble burst in mid-2006, with the S&P Case-Shillerhome price index up from 146.6 in March to 148.7 in April. Year-over-year the index is up from 134.1 in April 2012.
Homeowner equity reaches highest level since 2008 | HousingWire.
A full 94% of sellers do some “staging,” such as repainting or bringing in new furniture, says Coldwell Banker. “You can be so wowed by staging that you overlook important things,” says San Jose Realtor Carl San Miguel.
To focus on what matters, lift rugs to look at floors, ask the agent to turn off music so you can listen for nearby noise, and beware of any smells masked by candles. Also request a disclosure sheet, which lists known structural issues.
See what else CNNMoney advises regarding open homes here.
