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Teatown Lake News | #Katonah Real Estate
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Monthly Archives: September 2014
Why You Shouldn’t Have to Jump Through Hoops to Get a Mortgage | #BedfordHills Real Estate
Ever hear stories in the break room about how difficult it is to get a mortgage? “I have to jump through so many hoops to get my mortgage, it’s ridiculous. They keep asking me for financial information, I swear I already gave it to them.”
Reality check: Obtaining a mortgage is no easy feat these days, no matter how great your credit score is or how good your lender is. By understanding the loan process, however, you can make sure you don’t have to jump through hoops, and more importantly, that your loan closes on time.
The Nature of Mortgage Lending
Lenders have to meet tight federal requirements on your ability to repay. This includes a thorough review and examination of your credit, debt, income and assets, as well as the property and occupancy of the home in which you plan to be financing. Furthermore, lenders operate in a world in which they usually only have a one-time chance to make how you look on paper favorable to the decision-maker, i.e. the underwriter, the person within the mortgage company who issues an approval.
Know this: The role of the lender’s underwriter is to mitigate risk for the mortgage company. They carry out this objective by making sure your full financial picture adheres to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines, which serve as the model for other lenders and loan programs.
The reason you’ll often hear stories about all the hoops to jump through is because the loan officer did not properly set the borrower’s expectations at the forefront of the loan process — and/or the loan was not put together correctly. Remember, it’s very difficult to create a second first impression — if your loan officer did not properly package the loan for the underwriter to thoroughly examine and subsequently sign off, then you may have a cumbersome process. That’s if the loan can be approved.
Here’s a typical mortgage loan process:
- Lender gathers your financial documentation.
- Loan officer drafts a cover letter to the underwriter laying out the framework mortgage scenario.
- Underwriter reviews the complete credit package, ensuring the documentation adheres to risk requirements.
- Underwriter issues a disposition — a new loan status, approved with conditions, or at times a suspense.
The ideal outcome is the loan officer provided all of the necessary documentation, preemptively demonstrating how the loan package meets all the lending guidelines of the particular program the borrower is applying for, such as a conventional loan, FHA loan, etc.
read more…
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-shouldnt-jump-hoops-mortgage-100047265.html
Mortgage gauge hits 14-year low | #Bedford Real Estate
Here’s a fresh factoid sure to gratify housing bears: A broad gauge of mortgage applications recently hit its lowest level in 14 years, according to data released Wednesday.
The Mortgage Bankers Association reported its seasonally adjusted index, which measures the volume of mortgage applications, dropped more than 7% in the week that ended Sept. 5 to the slowest pace since the end of 2000. During that week, applications for loans to buy a home fell almost 3%, hitting their lowest level since February, while refinancing applications tumbled almost 11%, reaching the weakest result since late 2008.
But it may be too soon to dance on the housing market’s grave. There’s volatility in any weekly series. And there were at least two factors in the most recent weekly report that may be throwing off results.
First, the week that ended Sept. 5 contained Labor Day (which fell on Sept. 1). While MBA adjusted its data for the holiday, there may still be some distortions.
“The Labor Day holiday is one of the holidays where it’s hard to predict how people will respond,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist at federally controlled mortgage-finance giant Fannie Mae who added that he expects a “bounce back” in future mortgage-application readings.
read more….
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/09/10/mortgage-gauge-hits-14-year-low-but-that-doesnt-mean-housing-is-dead/
Meet an Adorable Updated Cape in Springs Asking $1.295M | Pound Rdige Real Estate
We’re crazy in love with this super-cute ivy-covered cape. The plot is a good size, with 1.5 acres, so you get complete privacy, including around the saltwater pool out back; there’s also a spa and outdoor shower. Inside, the house offers four bedrooms and two baths in about 2100sf. The interiors are stylish and updated yet modest and cottagey; we love some of the decorative touches like the vintage Erica Wilson crewel picture in a bedroom. The bathrooms aren’t pictured—we wonder if they’re the original 1957 ones, which we personally would love but many others wouldn’t. Anyway, with a reasonable price, the new owners can afford to put in new bathrooms if they choose.
· Chic Vintage Cape [Halstead]
read more….
http://hamptons.curbed.com/archives/2014/09/08/meet_an_adorable_updated_cape_in_springs_asking_1295m.php
Shiny, Aluminum-Clad ‘Dutchess House’ Wants Exactly $1M| #BedfordCorners Real Estate
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Location: Millerton, N.Y.
Price: $1,000,000
The Skinny: When New York architects Matthew Grzywinski and Amador Pons accepted the commission for what would eventually become Dutchess House No. 1, they took on a complicated brief that called for a mix of country home and urban convenience, a home that would be open to its environment while remaining totally secure, with a guest house for visiting relatives, and all on a very tight budget. The pair soon arrived at a design which the listing calls a “Hyper Modern Danish Farmhouse,” an angular, aluminum-clad two-story home with an easily secured lower level and an upper bedroom suite with broad sightlines and its own private terrace. A small patio in front of the home is bookended by the guest house—clad in aluminum and with a matching set of the home’s trademark yellow Dutch doors—and there’s also a bizarre/cool indoor-outdoor shower. The home, which the brokerbabble trumpets as “arguably the most interesting listing in the northern second homes marketplace,” asks a straight $1M.
read more…
http://curbed.com/archives/2014/09/09/nys-dutchess-house-no-1-and-its-adorable-dutch-doors-wants-1m.php
Would you live in a house clinging to a cliff? | #Chappaqua Real Estate
Continue reading the main story
A design for a home anchored to a sheer cliff face offers a striking vista. But what would it take to live in such a place, asks Jon Kelly.
For sale: distinctive seaside property with spectacular coastal views. Would suit high-value buyer untroubled by vertigo.
So far it only exists as a concept, but the design for the Cliff House by Modscape, an Australian firm that designs and builds prefabricated homes, is enough to give a lurch to the stomach of anyone uneasy with heights.
Here’s the pitch – it features three bedrooms (two doubles, the other en-suite), a stylish living space, a carport, separate bathroom and (tantalisingly or nausea-inducingly, depending on your tolerance of sheer drops) an open-air spa and barbecue area on the bottom floor. Artfully minimalist interior décor focuses visitors’ attention on “transcendent views of the ocean”.
According to the company’s website, the plans were drawn up after a couple approached the firm asking its designers to explore how to build a holiday home along “extreme parcels” of coast in Victoria.
read more…
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29127057
How Rare are Housing Bubbles? | #Armonk Real Estate
Do house prices experience periodic bull and bear markets like the stock market? Or are they stable in real (inflation-adjusted) terms most of the time, with big disruptions once or twice in a century? Two popular house price series tell these very different stories. Knowing which is better will lead to superior investment outcomes and improved policy decisions.
Karl (Chip) Case, of Wellesley College, and the Nobel Prize-winning Yale professor Robert Shiller, have constructed the most widely-known suite of indices, which are now part of the S&P index family. Here is the Case-Shiller national house price index in real terms from 1890 through December 2013:
Figure 1
Case-Shiller National House Price Index in Constant Dollars, 1890-2013
Source: http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index-inflation-adjusted/
And here is a house price series distributed by the data firm of Crandall, Pierce & Co., consisting of the median new home sales price in constant dollars collected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (For brevity, we call this the “Crandall” series.)
Figure 2
Crandall, Pierce Median New Home Sale Prices in Constant Dollars, March 1963-March 2014.03
Source: Crandall, Pierce & Co., Libertyville, IL. Reprinted with permission.
Could any two charts describing the same underlying phenomenon look more different? In the Case-Shiller chart, there was one great bear market in the last 50 years, from late 2006 to early 2012, following a massive price expansion or bubble.1
In the Crandall chart, however, bull and bear markets have alternated in a remarkably regular pattern. All of the bear markets represent losses of roughly 20%, with the crash of 2008-2011 only a little worse than the three other housing bear markets that occurred in 1968-1970, 1979-1982, and 1988-1992. The Crandall chart also shows real prices rising pretty smartly – 1.35% per year – while the Case-Shiller chart shows a much slower rise.
Note that the two price series do not purport to measure the same thing. The Crandall data are for new houses only; the Case-Shiller data are intended to reflect the entire stock of housing capital.2 The Crandall data are for a median house, the size and quality of which are constantly changing; Case and Shiller explicitly adjust for changes in the size and quality of a house. There are many other differences, so it’s understandable that the two series disagree somewhat – but they’re both intended to track house prices, so the contrast between them is striking and troubling.
read more….
http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/09/rare-housing-bubbles/
Key Biscayne’s Mashta Point Will List for $60-Fricken-Million | Armonk Real Estate
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Mashta Point, originally built by William J. Matheson as his private cove and deepwater anchorage when he owned much of Key Biscayne, is hitting the market for a whopping $60 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. This makes it Mashta Point Dade County’s most expensive listing, and will be Miami’s most expensive residential sale ever if it gets near its asking price.
Matheson built himself a lavish Moorish house, known as Mashta House, on the southern arm of the cove back in 1917, but it was demolished at some point in the 1950s (coincidentally by Mackle Construction, owned by relatives of Curbed Miami’s Editor, Sean McCaughan). Mashta House was known for its fabulous parties, and was said to host the likes of the Vanderbilts, Carnagies, and Mellons during the Roaring 20s, who would alight from their yachts waiting in the cove. In the 1990s Mashta House was replaced by the current house, built on the northern arm of the cove, a 12,000 square foot boxy beige house, with (if we’re counting right) five floors, an elevator, six bedrooms, eight baths, a pool, and a gazebo. Of course the real allure of the property is the land, a long hook-shaped peninsula at the tip of Mashta Island, and that cove. Ohhh that cove.
read more…
http://miami.curbed.com/archives/2014/09/08/key-biscayne-60-million-house.php
Gorgeous East 80th Street Art Nouveau Pad Wants $22.5M | #MtKisco Real Estate
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A three-apartment Upper East Side combo in a Beaux Arts limestone building off of Fifth Avenue has come to market for $22.5 million. The home was renovated by its most recent owners to include Art Nouveau flourishes—that bowing asymmetrical doorframe, the individualized banister—as well as more modern entertaining spaces like the double-height dining room with overhead glass barricades and a kitchen with a built-in espresso machine. The home last came to market in 2011 for $22.75 million but appears not to have sold. Not pictured, the 5,000-plus-square-foot apartment also has a soundproof library with French walnut cabinetry and a 350-bottle wine room.
read more…
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/09/08/gorgeous_east_80th_street_art_nouveau_pad_wants_225m.php
Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick Re-List $22M House | #NorthSalem Real Estate
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Celebrity super-couple and serial real estate shoppers Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are on the house hunt once again—the actors just re-listed their Greenwich Village townhouse at 20 East 10th Street for $22 million. The couple put the house on the market two years ago (during this same week) for $25 million, before briefly taking it off the market this April. Supposedly, the couple has never actually lived in the house, but they renovated it anyway (Vogue interviewed SJP in a different property earlier this year, one Curbed commenter says that the interview likely took place at their house on Charles Street). The 25-foot wide, 6,800-square-foot home has seven fireplaces, a landscaped garden, five bedrooms, and a full-floor master suite with a terrace, two walk-in closets, and a hand-carved stone tub. The couple bought the place in 2011 for just under $19M.
read more…
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/09/08/sarah_jessica_parker_matthew_broderick_relist_22m_house.php