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RealtyTrac: 65% of housing markets worse off than in 2008 | Katonah NY Real Estate
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Category Archives: Lewisboro
Patch: Douglas Kennedy Trial Opens in Mount Kisco with Clashes | Mt Kisco Realtor
A Basic Visual Design Guide for the Visually Incompetent | Mount Kisco NY Real Estate
Have you ever woken up one day, looked at your blog’s header and other visual elements, and thought, “My, this is ugly!”
You need a visual redesign.
What to do?
There are two solutions to this problem: you hire a designer to work on your new visuals from scratch, or you try to do it yourself. The first solution can come at a cost, so cash-strapped bloggers can easily be tempted to try building their blog’s visual elements by themselves.
But what if, like me, you’re visually incompetent? I mean, really incompetent? You can’t draw a stick figure to save your life, and you know absolutely nothing about the basics of visual design. You’re a writer, after all, and writers are better off writing than playing around with pictures.
And yet, you can’t afford a designer, so you need to find a way, any way, to do it yourself.
In this article, I will share the lessons I have learned trying to redesign my blog visuals on my own—header, logo, and all.
Start with software that you understand
We’ve all tried to play with those complex professional photo and visual design programs. You load a picture or an empty canvas and you think “Wow, with all these great tools, I’m sure I can come up with something amazing!”
Well, not so much. After five minutes of trying to understand the functions of the program, you give up. This happened to me time and time again, until I discovered a nice little Mac app called Logoist.
Logoist is simple and has all the functions I need. I can use cliparts from its extensive library, add text, apply filters and effects and insert pictures and photos. Its interface is intuitive and it has a few tutorials to show you the ropes. It also has automatic grid lines that help align all your elements. This simplicity let me create more freely than any professional design program could.
There are a lot of apps and programs you can use for both Mac and PC. Some are free and most are reasonably priced. You don’t have to go for the $500 creative suite to get the job done.
Black and white are your friends
I’ve always worked under the principle that, when in doubt, you should take the simplest route. In visual design, black and white is a great base to start with.
A black and white design looks professional, clean, and easy to work with. You don’t have to worry about colors matching or clashing. You know your text and your visual elements will be readable on a computer screen, a tablet or a smartphone. Black and white reminds readers of printed paper, something that’s ubiquitous and familiar. It’s trustworthy.
But of course, black and white can become a little bland. To add variety, choose one (and when I say that, I really mean one) accent color for your sidebar widgets, for the picture in your logo, or for the blog title in your header.
For example, on my writer’s website, I decided to go with dark red. It’s a color I like, and I think it brings about the right amount of visual interest. On my blog, I count on the pictures inserted in my posts for a blast of color.
Play with fonts
For my blog’s header, I decided to keep everything simple and play with fonts rather than pictures or images. Each word of my title (Read, Write, Live) uses a different font that expresses something unique about that word.
“Read” is in a formal, serif type that you could find in a book or newspaper. “Write” is in a handwritten-looking font that illustrates the act of writing on paper and separates it visually the other two words. “Live” is in a bold, sans-serif font with unexpected lines. I added a small ornament (one of the cliparts in Logoist) in the middle for visual interest.
Here’s the logo version, with the first letter of each word:
Fonts are great because you can give personality to words and ideas before they are processed by the brain through reading. They leave an instant impression, and can make or break the viewer’s desire to read on.
A tool I love for choosing awesome fonts is Google Fonts. If you’re tired of Times New Roman and Comic Sans, Google Fonts has an impressive collection of independent, public domain fonts you can use.
Be yourself, be realistic
The most important thing when you’re stuck having to design your own visual elements without training is to be honest with yourself. If you don’t know how to use vector software, then don’t. There are a lot of solutions that are within your reach and your abilities.
You also need to be realistic: there is no substitute for a professional design. As much as a self-designed header and logo can fill in temporarily, as soon as you get a steady flow of readers, you’ll be expected to get some custom, professional visual design on your blog. But as a beginner or novice blogger, a handmade, simple header and minimal visual elements can go a long way
One last thing: remember to have fun. I can tell you that this kind of visual work can be absorbing and exciting when you really get into it. I didn’t know I could come up with something so attractive on my own. I was very proud of the results, and it got me compliments from readers too!
Have you ever tried to design your own visual elements? Do you have any other basic visual design tips you’d like to share with the visually incompetent among us? I’d love to hear from you!
via problogger.net
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
Home sales dip, but tight inventories provide price support | Mount Kisco NY Homes for Sale
Sales of existing homes slipped from August to September but were still up strongly from a year ago — a sign that the national housing market is finding solid ground, the National Association of Realtors said today.
At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, sales of single-family homes, townhomes, condos and co-ops were down 1.7 percent from August to September, but up 11 percent from a year ago.
September sales of existing homes were up 11 percent from last September with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, which represents a slight dip of 1.7 percent from August’s upwardly revised rate of 4.83 million.
The 2.32 million homes on the market at the end of September represented a 5.9-month supply, down from 8.1 months a year ago. Many analysts view a six-month supply of housing as an even balance between buyer and seller demand.
Thanks to tight inventories, the national median home price was up 11.3 percent to $183,900 from a year ago, the seventh month in a row of annual increases and the longest stretch of annual increases in six years.
“We’re experiencing a genuine recovery,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a statement. “More people are attempting to buy homes than are able to qualify for mortgages, and recent price increases are not deterring buyer interest,” he said.
Article continues belowLow inventory will be a temporary issue, said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. “Rising prices will get some homeowners back above water and willing to sell their homes, and tight inventory will encourage builders to keep ramping up new construction, bringing more new homes to market,” he said.
First-time buyers accounted for 32 percent of purchasers in September, up from 31 percent in August.
Foreclosures and short sales sold for 21 percent below market value, on average, and accounted for 24 percent of September’s sales.
All-cash deals accounted for 28 percent of September’s sales — up a percentage point from August and down two from last September.
Existing-home sales, September 2012
Seasonally adjusted annual rate 4.75 million % change from September 2011 11.0% % change from August 2012 -1.7% National median price $183,900 % change from September 2011 11.3% Unsold inventory (months’ supply) 5.9 Share of all-cash buyers 28% Share of investor buyers 18% Share of first-time buyers 32% Share of distressed sales 24% Source: National Association of Realtors
All U.S. regions saw existing-home sales and prices rise in September from a year ago.
As was the case in August, the Midwest led the way in home sales with a 19.6 percent year-over-year increase to an annual rate of 1.1 million sales. The median price in the Midwest also rose in September from a year ago, up 7 percent to $145,200.
The South saw sales jump 14.2 percent from last September to an annual rate of 1.93 million. Median prices jumped, too, to 13.1 percent from last September to $163,600.
Home sales rose 7.3 in the Northeast on an annual basis to a rate of 590,000. Median prices in the region rose 4.1 percent to $238,700.
The West experienced a slight 0.9 percent yearly increase in home sales to 1.13 million, but saw the largest yearly median price jump of any region, 18.4 percent to $246,300, in September.
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via 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.
Flu Season Arrives In Westchester County | Mt Kisco Realtor
NY housing market posts strong third quarter | Katonah NY Real Estate
The New York state housing market posted its fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year home sales gains in the third quarter. The 3Q statewide median sales price increased by 4.4% and the number of pending sales grew for its fifth consecutive quarter, according to the New York State Association of Realtors.
NYSAR CEO Duncan Mackenzie said year-to-date home sales are up 6.2% and pending sales are up 15% compared to the year-ago period. The year-to-date median sales price of $215,000 is unchanged from a year ago.
“As we enter the final quarter of the year, New York state’s housing market continues to move in a positive direction as closed and pending sales continue to increase compared to a year ago,” he said. “While we have a seasonal market in our state, which tends to slow down in the fall and winter months, we are positioned to exceed the 2011 closed sales total and project that we will do so.”
Click the image below to see the full report.
The state reported 27,203 closed sales in 3Q, up 4.6% from the year-ago period. The year-to-date closed sales reached 69,144, an increase of 6.2% from the same period last year.
“There are many positives in the 2012 housing market for buyers who are seeking to move into their new home before the end of the year including all-time low mortgage rates, which were driven even lower by the Fed’s recent mortgage purchases,” said MacKenzie. “Sellers also continue to see improvements as they received nearly 95% of their list price in the third quarter, aided by shrinking inventory levels.”
via housingwire.com
New LinkedIn Profiles: This Week in Social Media | Katonah NY Realtor
Videos That Will Keep You Sane and Entertained During the Election | Katonah Homes for Sale
It’s no surprise when you take a look at “what’s trending” on YouTube, you see a host of election videos, usually something a candidate said that was either candidacy-killing or somehow awe inspiring. Everybody has their agenda when it comes to posting these videos. But you know, the election inspires many creators to come out with videos making fun of both candidates. Or, maybe I can learn something about the election that I didn’t know before. Here are a handful of videos that are informative and/or entertaining.
From Epic Rap Battles to CGP Grey: Something For Everyone
Let’s allow CGP Grey to give us a lesson on what happens if the election were to end in an electoral tie:
Bad Lip Reading recently posted this hilariously ridiculous take on the first Presidential debate, called “Eye of the Sparrow:”
Alphacat, who has been leveraging Obama and his excellent impersonation of him all year, including my favorite in which he has Obama sing a “99 Problems” cover:
Let’s go straight back to CGP Grey now, who explains how the Electoral College works:
Don’t worry, though, Grey explains there’s plenty of problems with that system:
Epic Rap Battles pitted the two candidates together in their usual, witty style, and teaming with the aforementioned Alphacat:
How about something real? Mitt Romney’s funny speech at the Al Smith dinner (with Obama on the dais) was uploaded by several YouTubers and all of them have been watched a few hundred thousand times combined so far:
You might as well hear the Town Hall debate “songified” by Schmoyoho, or as you’ll be calling it later, “Who’s Gonna Work It Out?”:
Anyway, hopefully these videos will brighten up your day. They did mine.
via reelseo.com