Category Archives: Bedford Corners NY

The Graying of Homeownership: Tight Credit is Tough on Younger, Single Buyers | Bedford Corners NY Real Estate

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High lending standards that make it virtually impossible for millions of younger, single home buyers to get a mortgage are creating an older, more married and wealthier population of homeowners.

The latest Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers by the National Association of Realtors found that dual income households comprise a greater portion of the housing market and singles are declining.  Sixty-five percent of all buyers are married couples, 16 percent are single women, 9 percent single men, 8 percent unmarried couples and 2 percent other; percentages of single buyers were slightly higher in 2011.

However, just two years ago, 58 percent of buyers were married, 20 percent were single women, 12 percent single men and 7 percent unmarried couples; the overall market share of single buyers declined a total of 7 percentage points over the past two years.  Before 2010, the market shares moved within a very narrow range, generally a percentage point or two.

The study shows the median age of first-time buyers was 31 and the median income was $61,800 in 2011.  The typical first-time buyer purchased a 1,600 square-foot home costing $154,100, while the typical repeat buyer was 51 years old and earned $93,100.  Repeat buyers purchased a median 2,100-square foot home costing $220,000. First-time home buyers had a 39 percent market share in the past.  Long-term survey averages show that four out of 10 buyers are typically first-time buyers, who are critical to a housing recovery because they help existing home owners to sell and make a trade.

Mortgage approvals have improved slightly in recent months but about half the national adult population has a credit score too low to get a loan.  Median scores for adults in the prime first time buyer age groups, 25-34 and 35-44 are far below the median scores of FHA and conventional purchase mortgages being approved today.

The September closing rate for applications for mortgages to purchase a home was 61 percent, the highest approval rate for purchase loans all year.  The median FICO score for all conventional purchase mortgages closed in September was 762 and for FHA purchase mortgages, popular among first-time buyers because of their low down payment requirement and used by 46 percent of first-time buyers in 2011, was 701, according to Ellie Mae, whose software platform processes about 20 percent of all U.S. mortgage originations.

The national median FICO score is 723 today, but median scores for younger adults are considerably lower.  For ages 25-34, the median is 652 and for the 35-44 age group, it’s 659.

Paul Bishop, NAR vice president of research, said the study is painting a clearer picture of the impact of mortgage limitations.  “We’ve known for some time that stringent mortgage credit standards have been holding back home sales, but these findings show single buyers have been hurt the most over the past two years.  Total home sales would be 10 to 15 percent higher without these unnecessary headwinds,” he said.

“The continued growth in married couples as single buyers shrink demonstrates that households with dual incomes are more successful in obtaining a mortgage.  However, given the historically favorable housing affordability conditions, most single-income buyers could also purchase a home and stay well within their means, if lending requirements were more sensible,” Bishop said.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Down Payments Fall to Three Year Low | Armonk Homes for Sale

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The median downpayment made by all homebuyers in 2012 was 9 percent, ranging from 4 percent for first-time buyers to 13 percent for repeat buyers. The median down payment was the lowest since 2009 but still far above the levels during the housing boom, when nearly half of first-time buyers made no downpayment at all.

First-time buyers who financed their purchase used a variety of resources for the down payment: 76 percent tapped into savings; 24 percent received a gift from a friend or relative, typically from their parents; and 6 percent received a loan from a relative or friend. Eleven percent tapped into a 401(k) fund, and 6 percent sold stocks or bonds. Ninety-three percent of entry-level buyers chose a fixed-rate mortgage, reported the National Association of Realtors.

Forty-six percent of first-time buyers financed with a low-downpayment FHA mortgage, and 10 percent used the VA loan program with no downpayment requirements. Forty-two percent cut spending on luxury items to buy their first home, 35 percent cut spending on entertainment and 27 percent cut spending on clothes.

In 2005, the median first-time home buyer scraped together a down payment of only 2 percent to buy a $150,000 home . Two years later, in 2007, the median downpayment by first-time buyers was still only 2 percent and 45 percent purchased with no money down – the same as in 2006. That year 43 percent of first-time home buyers purchased their homes with no-money-down loans.

After lenders tightened standards in the wake of the housing crash, the median down payment soared , reaching 11 percent in 2010-2011. First time buyers put about 5 percent down in 2011. Repeat buyers, pooling equity with savings, typically put down about 15 percent. Investment and vacation-home buyers have been paying higher down payments than those buying a primary residence. The median down payment for both was 27 percent, according to NAR’s 2011 Profile of Investment and Vacation Buyers.

“First-time buyers historically make small down payments, but repeat buyers like to put down 20 percent if they can to avoid paying mortgage insurance,” NAR’s Paul Bishop said. “The general loss in home value since the peak of the housing boom means many repeat buyers in recent years had to make smaller downpayments. Fortunately, prices have turned up this year and are showing sustained increases, so we’re on the road to a recovery in home equity.”

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Latest from the Town of Bedford | Bedford NY Homes

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Click the link below and then click on applicable meeting heading, to view meeting agenda and backup materials for the following meetings:
http://www.bedfordny.info/html/meetings.html
11/20 Town BoardStorm Debris and Leaf Pickup: http://www.bedfordny.info/html/d_publicworks.html

No Parking Rules in Effect Nov 15 – April 1
There shall be NO parking from 11:00pm to 7:00am on any county or Town highway in the Town of Bedford from November 15 to April 1. (Town Code Chapter 117)

Winter is here. STOP wasting money. Energize your Home now!
• Get a free comprehensive home energy assessment by State certified professionals
• Decide what improvements to make and how to finance upgrades (Consult with the staff at Energize if you need help)
• Join over 200 of your neighbors (including Supervisor Lee Roberts, Planning Board Chair Don Coe, Director of Energy Resources Mark Thielking) in making our community less reliant on oil, our homes more comfortable and less costly to operate. (We’re saving over $250,000 already!)  Go towww.energizebedford.org or call us at 914 302-7300

The Town DPW will be removing storm debris and performing leaf pickup. Please click here for details:http://www.bedfordny.info/html/whats-new.html

Recovery center at Westchester County Center will operate from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week until further notice. Parking fees at the County Center have been waived. The FEMA center will handle as one storm Hurricane Sandy and the nor’easter. Click here for additional information:http://www.bedfordny.info/html/pdf/whats_new/2012%20Multi%20Purpose%20Recovery%20Center.pdf

REMINDERS:
Please consider mulching your leaves this fall, rather than putting them out on the curb for the Town to pick up. Leaf mulching is an easy way to manage fall leaves and improve the soil on your property at the same time. More and more homeowners and landscapers are switching to leaf mulching. You and your landscaper can learn more at www.leaveleavesalone.org.

via trulia.com

Why you should never cut corners on finishes | Bedford Realtor

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A friend of mine is an expert plaster and drywall finisher with almost 50 years in the trade. Not long ago, he knocked himself out on a very labor-intensive plastering job. Instead of kudos, though, he got a complaint from the owner, who said:

“Jimmy, they painted the walls, but I’m really unhappy with the way they came out.”

“Who did the painting?” my friend asked.

“A couple of college students,” replied the owner, apparently without irony.

Tradespeople tell these kinds of horror stories all the time. Besides being entertaining, they can give remodelers an object lesson in the things that really matter: You can scrimp a little here and there, but don’t ever cut corners on the finishes that meet the eye — be they on the floor, the walls, the ceiling or the roof.

As it happens, my plasterer friend went back to see what the owner was complaining about, and his heart sank: The college kids — who probably had four hours of painting experience between them — had ruined all his painstaking plasterwork in one gloppy coat. Although my friend did manage to undo all this damage, it cost the owner a lot more than he’d “saved” by hiring cheapo painters. Next time, my friend advised him, he’d do better to hire a pro and not a couple of yahoos on summer break.

Sound advice, of course. The trouble is, for most remodelers, those final, all-important finish phases happen late in the job, at just about the same time their money is running out. This makes it excruciatingly tempting to hire low-bid, quick-and-dirty practitioners who could wreck all the hard work done before them.

Don’t fall into this trap. Instead, set aside an ironclad, untouchable reserve for the very best professional finish work you can reasonably afford. This is especially critical if you tend to be an impulsive buyer, and are always tempted to spend “just a little bit more” on unplanned extras along the way. It’s this kind of “feature creep” that exhausts budgets at just the time the finish work comes around.

Your reserve for finishes should ensure that you can afford decent-quality stucco, roofing, hardwood flooring and carpet, but above all, it should provide for top-quality painting. Why? Because, of all the aforementioned trades, painting is the only one that homeowners wrongly assume any fool can do. Well, any fool can paint, all right, but the results will speak for themselves.

It’s perfectly reasonable to shop for bargains on materials such as lumber, pipe, electrical wire, and so on. You may even be able to cut costs by using salvaged material or providing sweat equity on framing, plumbing or what have you. As long as these invisible portions of the job are safe and adequate, no one will ever know or care that you didn’t pay top dollar for them.

Not so with finishes. Slapdash work will be right there, staring you in the face every morning. Save where you will, but don’t save on the surfaces that meet the eye.

via inman.com

Repair rather than replace your carpeting | Bedford Hills Realtor

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Stains, tears, burns, loose areas and other issues with your carpeting can be a real eyesore, and in some cases can even be a potentially dangerous tripping hazard. Rather than replace an entire roomful of expensive carpeting, you can often repair those problem areas instead.

Restretching carpeting

Wall-to-wall carpeting is installed by stretching it into place in the room. Over time, the weight of furniture and the action of people moving over the carpeting can cause the carpet’s backing to break down, resulting in random loose, wrinkled areas. When that happens, assuming the carpeting is otherwise in good shape, it can be restretched to remove the wrinkles.

When the carpet is first stretched into place, it’s hooked onto a tack strip that’s located around the perimeter of the room, just out from the wall. The tack strip has hundreds of tiny nails in it, which are angled toward the wall. The carpet is stretched over the tack strip during installation, then as it’s released from the stretching process, it slides back and catches on the angled nails, holding it in place.

A small area of loose carpet can be restretched using a knee kicker. This is a specialized tool with angled metal teeth on the bottom at one end, and a big pad at the other end. Place the kicker on the carpet about six inches away from the wall with the teeth down and in contact with the carpet, then apply steady pressure with your knee against the pad on the end of the kicker. This will push the carpet toward the wall, and allow you to release it from the tack strip and pull it up.

With the carpet loose, you can now use the kicker to restretch and tighten the carpet back up over the tack strip. Each time you kick the kicker with your knee, the carpet will move over the tack strip and catch, tightening it a little further.

When the wrinkles are gone, maintain a light, steady pressure on the kicker with your knee, and press the carpet down firmly into contact with the tack strip. Use the edge of a hammer or other metal tool for this — NOT your hand (all those little nails are sharp!). Finally, trim off any excess carpet you may have created at the wall.

Larger areas of loose carpet are handled with a tool called a carpet stretcher. Carpet stretchers have a series of telescoping poles with a pad at one end and a large head with angled teeth and a top-mounted handle at the other end.

A carpet stretcher works like a kicker, but over a larger area. The padded end is placed against a wall, then the poles are extended so that the head ends up near the opposite wall. Pressure is then applied to the handle, allowing the teeth to grip the carpet and move the head, stretching the carpet.

Carpet repairs

To take care of burn mark or a stain you can’t remove, you’ll need to patch in a new piece of carpeting, so the first issue is to locate some carpet that matches. If you saved some scrap pieces from when the carpet was first installed, you’re ahead of the game.

If not, your next best option is to take some matching carpeting out of a small closet. You can then replace the flooring in that closet with something else — a remnant of complimentary carpet from a carpet store, or, better yet, a little bit of ceramic tile or prefinished wood flooring.

One of the best methods for repairing small areas of damage is to use a carpet “cookie cutter.” This is a special, round tool with a sharp blade on the bottom that cuts out the damaged carpet, and then cuts a perfectly matching patch from a piece of scrap. The patch is then adhered in place with a special self-adhesive disk, or with carpet repair tape.

Larger repairs or damaged seams are more difficult to deal with. For a large damage area, first the damaged area is cut out, then a patch is cut from matching carpet. After carefully fitting and trimming the patch, it’s adhered into place using a special carpet heat-seaming iron and hot-melt tape. The tape is placed under the carpet and centered under the seam, then the hot iron is placed on the tape, melting the adhesive. The carpet is then pressed down into the hot adhesive, making a permanent joint.

Loose seams are repaired in the same way. The edges of the seam are carefully trimmed to remove any damaged material, then a kicker is used to push the seam back together temporarily while it’s glued back together with hot tape.

For do-it-yourselfers who want to give this a shot, most of these tools, including the seaming iron, stretcher, kicker and usually even the cookie cutter, are available at most rental yards. Otherwise, contact your local carpet store for referrals to an experienced carpet repair person.

via inman.com