How to Buy Farmland, Even If You Think You Can’t | Chappaqua NY Realtor
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The Realtor’s 3 Step Guide to Managing Online Reputation | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
The Realtor’s 3 Step Guide to Managing Online Reputation
I thought this was a nice infographic from our friends at DooID. We talk a lot about your online reputation on Tech Savvy and the things you need to do to stay on top of it, so this graphic falls right into place here.
Here are the three steps they recommend to get started.
1. Define Your Personal Brand
2. Build Your Online Identity
3. Monitor Your Reputation
Check out the graphic below to see the tools you can use to successfully manage your reputation.
How to Buy a Home Below Current Real Estate Value | Chappaqua NY Reator
Want to increase your chances of buying a home below current real estate value? Just look for a seller who didn’t listen to his agent.
The best real estate agents encourage their sellers to do whatever it takes to get the home in its absolute best condition before going to market. The better the home shows, the more likely the seller will get top dollar.
Sometimes, this could be as simple as removing personal items or decluttering. Other times, an agent will suggest bigger fixes, such as painting, replacing carpet or upgrading countertops or cabinets. Savvy sellers listen to their agents, make the changes suggested and go to market in top form. That’s not always how it plays out, however.
For any number of reasons, many sellers protest suggested fixes. Either they don’t want to be inconvenienced, don’t believe the fixes will matter or don’t have the financial resources to make it happen. Inevitably, this means the buyer will get a discount on that property.
How to spot a home that might sell below its value
Is there a home for sale in a good neighborhood and in the desired school district that seems to be well-priced but for some reason isn’t selling? This is the home you want to investigate, because chances are the seller didn’t listen to his agent. Specifically, here are some tell-tale signs to look for.
Big furniture or a lot of furniture
Most people don’t buy furniture to use when staging their home. Often a seller may have a lot of furniture in one room, which makes the room look small to potential buyers. Real estate agents and professional home stagers know this all too well. For example, stagers always suggest a small loveseat over a full-blown couch or sectional sofa. Also, in the bedrooms, king beds often take up too much space. So a stager will often push the seller to swap it out for a queen or full-sized bed.
When you enter a house that seems crowded with furniture, imagine the rooms with fewer or smaller pieces. Be aware that plenty of potential buyers won’t get past the sense that the rooms are too small, and they’re likely to move on to a home that feels bigger. In turn, this could give you room to negotiate a good deal with the seller.
Dark rooms
There was a home in West Hartford, CT on a great block, but the interior was dark. Three large French doors in the living room led to a deck, but the doors were stained black, and the carpet was brown. On top of that, the window coverings were big, heavy and overtook the room.
The house sat on the market for months, even though the price wasn’t far off the real estate market value. Here’s why: Every buyer walked in and out because the house was so dark. After the home had been on the market for three months, a smart buyer made an offer $40,000 below asking and ended up getting it.
Before the buyer moved in, he removed the window coverings, stripped the stain on the doors and painted them white, pulled up the old carpet and had the floors stained to a lighter oak. Right away, the dark room became light, bright and welcoming. The buyer’s total cost: $9,000, which instantly added $31,000 to his equity.
Grandma or Bambi staring down from the walls
Buyers are looking to see themselves — and not the current owners — in a home. Too often, however, the seller hasn’t “depersonalized” his home enough, or at all. Even though the listing agent may have told the seller to clear the house of his possessions, the seller may be proud of his accomplishments and resist.
And so potential buyers are treated to walls decorated with diplomas, family photos, awards and trophies. Moose and deer heads hanging on walls are surefire deal killers, especially when the hunting rifle used to kill Bambi is proudly displayed, too. At best, buyers tend to see such highly personal stuff as clutter that takes the focus away from the home. They’re turned off by it all, and they walk away.
They might also be walking away from a great deal. Are the bones of the home good? Does it have the floor plan you like? Are the kitchens and baths in acceptable condition? Is it in the area where you want to live? If you say “yes” to all of these, hang around a little longer. Imagine the home without the seller’s junk. Picture yourself living there, without Bambi.
A good home that doesn’t show well = a great opportunity
Ultimately, sellers who don’t listen to their agents or stagers inadvertently give savvy buyers a discount. For you to see that potential, try to understand as much as you can about why the seller is selling. Look for sellers who have ignored their agent’s advice. While conventional wisdom says that a buyer would be turned off by a home that shows poorly, go against this. Imagine the potential. And then, once the home is yours, make those small changes the seller should have made. Right away, you’ll have a little bit (maybe even a lot) of equity, thanks to the seller.
via zillow.com
RealtyTrac: 65% of housing markets worse off than in 2008 | Katonah NY Real Estate
via housingwire.com
Lost Home Equity Leaves Thirty-somethings Vulnerable | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
Contrary to popular belief, loss of equity in their homes since 2007 has hurt adults in their late thirties more than their Baby Boomer parents, contributing to fears that they will not have enough income and assets for their retirement, according to a new Pew Research survey released today.
Americans today are more worried about their retirement finances than they were at the end of the recession in 2009, especially younger and middle-aged adults rather than among those closer to retirement age-a major shift in the pattern that had prevailed at the end of the recession.
About four-in-ten adults (38 percent) say they are “not too” or “not at all” confident that they will have enough income and assets for their retirement, up from 25 percent in a Pew Research survey conducted in late February and March of 2009. Among adults between the ages of 36 and 40, 53 percent say they are either “not too” or “not at all” confident that their income and assets will last through retirement. In contrast, only about a third (34 percent) of those ages 60 to 64 express similar concerns, as do a somewhat smaller share (27 percent) of those 18 to 22 years old.
Fears over retirement are driven by a companion Pew Research analysis of data collected by the Federal Reserve Board in its Survey of Consumer Finances. For most Americans, equity in their homes represents most of their wealth and the collapse of housing values in the middle of the past decade sent personal wealth into a nose dive for most homeowners, regardless of age.
Overall, the Consumer Finances survey found that median home equity-the fair market value of a home less the amount of the outstanding mortgage and other liens-fell by about a third (32 percent) from 2007 to 2010. And U.S. Census data released in June found that most of the decline in median wealth between 2005 and 2010 can be attributed to sinking home values.
Median home equity-so-called housing wealth-declined the most for homeowners ages 35 to 44. Between 2007 and 2010, the equity of homeowners in this age group was cut in half (52 percent). In contrast, housing wealth fell by 30 percent among those 55 to 64 and by 20 percent among adults 65 and older.
Adults 35 to 44 years old have a much greater share of their wealth represented by their home equity because they have not yet had the time to accumulate financial wealth. Moreover, these younger adults have had less time to build equity, so the market collapse cut into a greater share of a smaller base than for longtime homeowners. Finally, this age group benefitted less than older adults from the rise in stock market values since many sold their holdings when stocks fell in 2009.
The S&P 500 Index peaked at 1,576 in October 2007 but then fell to a modern low of 667 in March 2009. Since then, the stock market began a steady rise, closing at 1,258 on the last day of December 2010. It now stands at about 1,450, nearly back to its earlier peak.
During this decade of wild market swings, ownership of stocks and retirement accounts, such as 401(k) and thrift accounts, fell among most age groups. But the declines were greatest among those ages 35 to 44. The proportion of adults in this age group who directly held stocks declined by nine percentage points from 2001 to 2010, with half of this drop occurring before 2007. In contrast, the share of adults 65 and older who directly held stocks declined only 3 percentage points from 2001 to 2010, from 21 percent to 18 percent.
The proportion of 35- to 44-year-olds who held stocks indirectly through retirement accounts also disproportionately fell by 9 percentage points, about double the decline among those younger than 35 or between 45 and 54 years old (4 percentage points for both groups). As a consequence, those in the 35 to 44 age group have benefited less from the rapid increase in stock prices since 2009 because they were less likely than their older counterparts to own stock and retirement accounts.
Get over your real estate trauma | Chappaqua Realtor
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series.
Every day, more and more Americans click into a decidedly post-recession state of mind. Whether or not they’re still unemployed or upside-down, ever-increasing numbers of us have grown tired of being down and depressed and decided to do whatever it takes to get back on our feet and back into the flow of life — it’s so short, after all.
Fortunately, the real estate market seems to be flowing in that same direction: Millions of Americans have seen their underwater mortgages dry out this year, due to nothing more than increased buyer demand, which, in turn, increased home values. But millions more still owe more than their homes are worth — and many more than that are still dealing with the financial and emotional trauma of struggling to make the mortgage payment, tussling with their banks over loan modification requests, a past foreclosure or short sale, or even recession-created fears around buying a home, or selling and locking in losses.
Here’s the deal: The more you fear or focus on this trauma, the more it becomes a major influence on your decisions and your life. So, how can you extinguish it altogether? Here are some strategies:
1. Focus on what you are for, not on what you are against. We often create what we fear, largely out of our panic and paralysis around the topic. So, if you constantly worry about losing your home, being upside-down and whether your home’s value will ever recover, you are simply more likely to get and stay in these situations. Anxiety will cause you to spend more than you should, or to perform poorly at work, snowballing into high credit card bills or an interruption in income.
It’s a small mindset tweak, but a powerful one, to focus instead on what you want to have happen — or, as “Three Simple Steps” author Trevor Blake puts it, what you are for.
If you are for being debt-free, you might be inspired to start a small business and be your own bailout. If you are for getting out from underwater, you might decide to aggressively pursue the loan modification options, or to rent out an extra room on Airbnb to fund extra payments to reduce your mortgage principal.
I’m not saying these are the things you have to do to create the situations you want — I’m simply suggesting what I know from personal experience, which is that if you focus on what you are for, then you are much more likely to see that happen than when all of your time, energy and emotion is fixated on the things you hope don’t happen.
2. Metabolize the trauma. I believe that everything we do — every endeavor we make, every decision, no matter how painful or joyous the outcome — is a success. We are either successful at what we were trying to accomplish, or the experience is a successful education. But when we have painful experiences, it’s difficult to get free from the pain and move on until we can appreciate the successful education that the experience holds.
In order to let go of the trauma you might still have from things that happened around your mortgage or your home, you might find it helpful to work with the image Dr. Henry Cloud creates in his book “Necessary Endings”: the image of metabolizing the experience.
When we eat food, we metabolize it, holding onto the elements that are nourishing and beneficial and eliminating the rest. You can do the same thing with experiences like losing a home to foreclosure or short sale, or being upside-down on your mortgage: Take some quiet time to be real with yourself and identify what learnings you can cull from all the decisions and events that led to your real estate trauma.
Once you do that, you can almost have a ceremony of sorts where you simply declare to yourself that you’ve got what you needed from the experience, and you’re ready to let the rest go. It might sound new age-y, but even the most wizened business execs and hardened military strategists will tell you that learning and letting go of past failures and disappointments so you can fight the next battle are essential ingredients of resilience, and that resilience is a prerequisite for long-term success.
Next week, I’ll provide you with three more strategies for letting go of your real estate baggage.
via inman.com
Move Inc. mortgage lead platform gaining traction | Cross River NY Real Estate
Screen shot of PreQualplus tool on Realtor.com
After getting off to a false start, Realtor.com operator Move Inc. says its mortgage lead generation platform, PreQaulplus, is taking off, receiving more than $4 billion in mortgage requests during the summer buying season.
Citing the increase in mortgage prequalification applications, Move Inc. says it’s expanded the PreQualplus platform to accommodate multiple loan originators.
Move launched a lending site that included prequalification tools, MortgageMatch.com, in December 2010, with Houston-based Cornerstone Mortgage Co.
The companies said they planned to integrate MortgageMatch.com’s prequalification tools into Realtor.com to help homebuyers focus on homes they were most likely qualified to buy.
But Move and Cornerstone parted ways, and Move stopped offering loans through the site within a few months of launching it.
Last year, Move launched PreQualplus with MetLife Home Loans, the residential mortgage division of MetLife Bank, N.A. But in January, parent company MetLife Inc. announced that MetLife Home Loans was getting out of the forward mortgage business.
To keep PreQualplus alive, Move then partnered with Discover Home Loans Inc., an Illinois-based lender licensed in 49 states (all but New York). This week, Move announced that it had brought a second lender to the platform — Irvine, Calif.-based Intercap Lending.
“PreQualplus has expanded to support multiple mortgage originators and will continue to add loan originators to meet rising demand, particularly in the states of California, Florida and Texas,” Move said in announcing the addition of Intercap.
PreQualplus employs an automated underwriting process to evaluate consumers’ credit scores and their capacity to afford monthly mortgage payments using decision-making technology based on pricing, eligibility, underwriting, a full credit history review, credit risk analytics, and loan scenario modeling.
Consumers can access PreQualplus at PreQualplus.com or on Realtor.com by clicking on “Estimate My Payment” or “Get Prequalified Today” links on Realtor.com listing detail pages.
Rival real estate search portal Trulia got into the business of generating leads for mortgage lenders last month with the launch of a consumer mortgage rate and fee comparison tool. Participating lenders include First Financial Services Inc., BNC National Bank, West Star Mortgage Inc., Box Home Loans, CapWest Mortgage, North American Savings Bank, RoundPoint Mortgage Co., RMC Vanguard Mortgage and First Choice Bank
Zillow has been offering mortgage loan quotes from multiple lenders on its “Mortgage Marketplace” since April, 2008 — a service the company says generates more than 300,000 consumer loan requests a month.
Google launched a consumer mortgage comparison service in 2009 which became part of Google Advisor before being discontinued without explanation, Search Engine Watch reported in February.
via inman.com
ClosingCorp feeding closing costs to title agents | Katonah NY Real Estate
Screen shot of Closing.com homepage
Agents for title insurance underwriter North American Title Insurance Co. (NATIC) now have free access to a service that provides guaranteed recording fee, transfer tax and filing instruction data for every residential property nationwide.
The service, DART, is offered by La Jolla, Calif.-based ClosingCorp, a closing costs data and technology provider for lenders, real estate professionals and consumers. ClosingCorp recently updated DART, which debuted in December 2011.
The service automatically determines which recording office or tax authority to use for each property by street address and generates the correct recording fees, transfer taxes and filing instructions. DART also calculates buyer and seller splits based on statutory and customary practices for every transfer tax location in the nation, the company said.
“With more than 4,000 recorder offices and tax jurisdictions and more than 80,000 related taxes, fees, customs, rules and regulations, DART gives title agents immediate access to the precise recording fee, transfer tax and recording instruction data that is so crucial for their businesses,” said Emilio Fernandez, president of NATIC, in a statement.
DART is available through NATIC’s internal AgentLink platform, which provides title agents with business tools and underwriting resources, including forms.
NATIC does business in 28 states. The Miami-based company had 0.83 percent market share nationwide in the second quarter, according to the American Land Title Association (ALTA).
via inman.com
Agents: Do not be afraid to set yourself on fire | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
“Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.”
That’s a quote by Arnold H. Glasow I came across years ago that always stayed with me.
I speak with agents almost every day. Selling real estate is a tough business.
Between navigating the shifting expectations from buyers and sellers, building your brand presence online and trying to keep up with all the shiny new tech and social media tools in our space, pushing yourself to innovate your business and experiment with your marketing strategies can be daunting.
That’s why HomeFinder.com set out to find some of the most creative agents across the country who blaze their own trails and find success using digital marketing across YouTube, Instagram, Blogging, Facebook and Single Property Websites. For these agents, success meant actual sales, marketing credibility and lasting client relationships.
We put their stories together in this free E-book, Five Agent Success Stories – Close More Business Using Digital Marketing.
Article continues below–>
In each story, you’ll learn:
- How that agent uses that specific marketing channel or tactic in his/her business
- Detailed success stories that led to a sale
- Advice to get started or recharge your past or current efforts
Here’s a sneak peek and a few excerpts from one of our fire-starters – Kendyl Young.
Kendyl is an agent with Teles Properties in Glendale, CA. She has produced videos for her business for three years and has more than 146 videos on her YouTube channel for her listings and neighborhoods.
Kendyl constantly gets into situations in which she knocks on someone’s door or
sees someone out at a restaurant and they recognize her from her videos. One such instance happened at a pizza place, where a fellow patron instantly recognized her.This man watched her market report videos and said he’d always wanted to meet her because of them. He thought she was very smart and would always forward her videos to his
friends who were interested in real estate.By using YouTube like this, Kendyl made invaluable inroads to this potential client’s insular community without ever having met him or any of his friends.
“It’s made me realize my videos have far more reach than I would have thought,” she said.
A few of Kendyl’s YouTube tips:
- Resist the temptation to turn on your smartphone and shoot whatever comes to mind and post.
- Watch as many real estate videos as you can. Note what you like and what you don’t.
- If you are not willing to learn how to make good videos yourself, find a professional. Everything you put out there is a reflection of the quality of your business.
- Good sound is more important than good visual.
Kendyl’s story continues in this E-book, along with four others.
Take a cue from these agents who have already tried and succeeded. Learn, borrow, adapt.
And don’t forget to keep those matches handy.
via next.inman.com
The fiscal cliff would cut the deficit by $720 billion in 2013, but even deficit hawks hate it | Katonah Realtor
If all you wanted to do was to reduce the deficit as quickly as possible, here’s one very simple way to get it done: Go off the fiscal cliff.
Do so would result in about $720 billion in total austerity in 2013, and it would bring down the deficit that year in some of major ways, including $180 billion from income tax hikes, $120 billion in revenue from the payroll tax, $110 billion from the sequester’s automatic spending cuts, and $160 billion from expiring tax breaks and other programs, according to Bank of America’s estimates.
So when businesses and politicians fret about the economic fallout from the fiscal cliff, they’re reacting to the consequences of dramatic deficit-reduction in the short-term. It would save the government hundreds of billions of dollars next year, but would also take away the equivalent 4.6 percent of GDP through tax hikes and spending cuts—a sharp fiscal contraction that economists say would be a drag on growth in a still-tepid economy.
Why, then, do so many in Washington believe that the only way to avoid to the dreadful consequences of deficit reduction is…deficit reduction?
It’s partly because there are some aspects of the fiscal cliff that Democrats and Republicans want to hang onto, albeit in a different form. Nobody wants the big, dumb cuts in the sequester to take effect. But, in theory at least, Republicans do want the $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction contained in the sequester: That’s what they demanded last year, at least, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in August. And the expectation is that they’ll be pushing for an alternative to the across-the-board sequester that tries to avert the defense cuts while hanging onto the others.
Democrats prefer an alternative that would try to preserve other aspects of the fiscal cliff—namely, the Bush tax cuts expiring on high-income Americans. And leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer are already trying to frame the looming fight in terms of a trade-off on the deficit: Why not not pay down the deficit instead of giving big tax cuts to wealthy Americans?
Finally, centrist deficit hawks want to use the fiscal cliff as an opportunity to push through their own plan for tax, spending and entitlement overhaul. It would entail much bigger overall deficit reduction, but phased in gradually instead of all at once. Even a “grand bargain” would have about $400 billion in 2013 austerity, as opposed to the $720 billion in the entire fiscal cliff, according to the Bank of America’s estimates. And they’re anticipating that the only way for either side to get what it wants is to sit down and agree to their kind of bargain.
So all of these schools of thought would take Congress in the direction of doing less immediate deficit-reduction, not more.
