Category Archives: Lewisboro

Housing Starts Rise 2.8% In March | Katonah NY Homes

Leave a reply

 

Numbers released by the Commerce Department Wednesday suggest that last year’s rapid housing recovery is continuing to slow.

Housing starts rose 2.8% in March to a seasonally adjusted rate of 946,000. This is higher than the month before, but 5.9% lower than the rate one year earlier. Housing starts measure actual groundbreakings on new construction and are thus a timely measure of market conditions.

Other data also suggest a slowdown. Building permits, a good indicator of the future, were 990,000 (seasonally adjusted) in March. That’s 2.4% below the revised February rate, the fourth drop over the last five months.

The numbers missed expectations by economists surveyed by both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal; economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted housing starts at 965,000 and permits at 1.01 million.

Yesterday’s National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index showed builder confidence a bit slack; the index rose just 1 point in March to 47. A score of 50 or higher indicates that more builders view conditions as good than poor.

However, the March data shows starts of single-family homes at 635,000 (seasonally adjusted), a rate that is 6% above February’s revised figure. Construction of single-family homes dropped in January but has been steadily rising each month since.

 

 

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2014/04/16/housing-starts-rise-2-8-in-march/

House prices in Britain are rising again | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

AFTER their worst slump for a generation, house prices in Britain are rising again. In the 12 months to January 2014, the value of homes increased by 6.8% across the country and by 13% in London, according to the Office for National Statistics. In the capital, where cash-rich buyers have viewed property as shelter from economic turmoil in the euro zone and elsewhere, prices are now at an all-time high after adjusting for inflation. In his old job at Canada’s central bank, Mark Carney, the boss of the Bank of England, was accused of presiding over a housing bubble. But since the crisis the bank has a bag of new tricks it can use to steady the market (see print article).

With base rates at an all-time low, mortgage repayments as a percentage of income are near their historic lows for first-time buyers, according to the Council for Mortgage Lenders, a trade association. That has allowed homeowners to borrow ever larger amounts of money from the banks. If real wages continue to stagnate across the country, they may struggle when interest rates eventually start to rise.

Explanation:

This interactive chart allows readers to compare the ups and downs of Britain’s 13 regional housing markets as measured by the Office for National Statistics. The data begin in 1968 for nine regions and countries, extending to 12 from 1992 onwards. As well as prices in nominal and real terms (deflated by the retail prices index), we have presented affordability measures for first-time buyers compiled by the Council for Mortgage Lenders. There are five different measures:

• House-price index: in nominal terms, rebased to 100 at the select base date. • Prices in real terms: the house-price index is deflated by retail prices and rebased at 100 to take account of the effects of inflation on purchasing power. • Mortage payments as % of income: first-time buyers’ median mortgage interest payments as % of income (at the time of housing completion).

 

 

 

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/04/british-house-prices

7 beautiful rooftop gardens | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

    Charlie Dresen, SteamboatsMyHome.com

Want to add value to your home? Plant a garden in the sky.

Rooftop gardens are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to wow buyers and shore up the value of your home, real estate agents say.

Homes in big cities benefit the most from a rooftop garden, where homeowners sacrifice yard space for the urban experience. But even suburban homeowners are taking advantage of deck and roof space to grow gardens with an elevated view.

“It’s just such a luxury to have somewhere you can go that’s outside of your four walls,” said Leslie Piper, consumer housing specialist for the Realtor.com and a real estate agent. “Buyers really see it as something indulgent.”

That’s actually part of the reason why for a time interest in outdoor spaces like roof gardens had been withering. But as the housing market recovers, buyers’ appetites for these unique outdoor havens have returned.

When Realtor.com surveyed 1,000 buyers about what makes them fall in love with a home, outdoor living spaces came out on top, beating out their desire for open floor plans and curb appeal. About 51 percent of those surveyed said that outdoor space was the most attractive quality in a home.

“It’s certainly cropping back up as something that’s becoming more important to homeowners,” Piper said.

Buyers are specifically looking for outdoor fireplaces, wet bars and a lounge area for entertaining, as well as a place to grow their own fresh herbs and vegetables, she added.

Most of the amenities for an outdoor space can be added by the homeowner, so they tend to be a relatively inexpensive way to add value to a home.

“You can go online now and look at all these great resources that are out there, and in the past you didn’t know where to start,” Piper said. “That kind of access to ideas is really spurring these spaces.”

If you are looking for an attractive roof garden built in to a new home, check out these seven homes.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/media/7-beautiful-rooftop-gardens/

 

13 riskiest cities for natural disasters | Katonah NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

Before you can fully enjoy the sunshine of summer, you have to get through the April showers, in addition to any other natural disaster that might come through your neck of the woods.

The weather is a common variable that plays into the success of housing, with this year being no exception.

“During the winter and early spring unusually cold temperatures and frequent, powerful snow and rain storms in various markets and even regions (particularly the Midwest) deterred potential homebuyers and delayed construction activities,” Fitch Ratings said.

Back in January, HousingWire published a list of the top 10 cities to avoid natural disasters, but if you are not fortunate enough to live in one of those weather havens, you still might be well off…unless you live in one of these cities.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/29599-riskiest-cities-for-natural-disasters

Alternatives to Putting 20% Down on a Home | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

It’s a mantra often repeated in the real estate industry: If you want to buy a house, you need a 20 percent down payment. But with the average house in the U.S. costing $311,400 as of December 2013, according to the Census Bureau, all one has to do is the math to get a coronary. Raising a 20 percent down payment isn’t an easy thing to do.

Fortunately, you don’t have to. “It’s a myth that all homebuyers must have a 20 percent down payment to buy a home,” says Nancy Herrera-Siples, a Riverside, Calif., branch manager at Primary Residential Mortgage.

“Putting less than 20 percent is OK with most banks,” agrees Christopher Pepe, president of Pepe Real Estate in Brooklyn, N.Y. So why do you constantly hear that you need to put 20 percent down? Because if you don’t, it usually means you’ll have to shell out money for either private mortgage insurance or government insurance, which is usually financed by the Federal Housing Administration. Mortgage insurance protects the lender in case you can’t make your payments and the house is foreclosed on. But PMI payments don’t last forever. When your loan-to-value ratio is 80 percent, you can ask the lender if you can stop paying PMI; at 78 percent, the lender is required to cancel it.

Still, PMI can easily cost a couple hundred dollars a month, assuming your house is valued in the neighborhood of $200,000. Pepe says the average he sees is $700 a month just for PMI. But keep in mind that he’s based in New York City, which boasts one of the highest costs of living in the country.

So if you really want a house and you’re looking for alternatives to putting 20 percent down, here’s what you need to know.

Figure out financing before looking for a house. There are numerous programs that will help you buy a home without 20 percent down, says Dan Smith, president of Private Mortgage Solutions, a mortgage bank in Atlanta.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/alternatives-putting-20-down-home-124500838.html

Londoners priced out of real estate market blame foreigners | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

Protesters shouting “No more homes for millionaires!” outside London City Hall this week want real estate developers to stop pandering to wealthy foreign buyers and start building more housing that locals can afford.

Sparking the protest was a plan by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. to build up to 3,500 new homes not far from London’s Canary Wharf financial district. Mayor Boris Johnson has approved the project.“These are the kind of homes that local people will never be able to afford,” said Cheryl Coyne, a 63-year-old semiretired schoolteacher.

“There are thousands of people in the borough who need homes, and instead they’re building flats for multimillionaires.”Average London house prices increased 18 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the most since 2003, to a record 362,699 pounds ($604,000), the Nationwide Building Society said.

Much of that increase stems from wealthy non-British investors seeking assets that would hold their value. Builders use advance sales, often to buyers from Asia, to help finance new projects. Foreign-born buyers made 69 percent of central London new-home purchases in the two years through June 2013, with 28 percent living outside the U.K., broker Knight Frank LLP said in October.

When the Malaysian owners of the Battersea Power Station project, on the south bank of the River Thames, sold the first 866 homes in just three days in January, more than half went to foreign buyers.

 

 

 

Source: Bloomberg – See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/londoners-priced-out-of-real-estate-market-blame-foreigners/?utm_source=20140404&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam#sthash.F8Or8wU6.dpuf

Charges in connection with mortgage fraud | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

 

Government officials charged Poppi Metaxas, former president and CEO of Gateway Bank, in Oakland, Calif., with bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy and perjury.

Christy Romero, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, George Venizelos, assistant director-in-charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office and David Montoya, inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General announced that an indictment was unsealed Wednesday.

In 2009, SIGTARP said that Metaxas fraudulently caused Gateway to execute a sham “round trip” transaction in which the bank self-funded a down payment to make it appear that Gateway had sold toxic, non-performing mortgage loans.

According to the indictment, in February and March 2009, Metaxas allegedly engaged in a scheme to defraud Gateway in connection with Gateway’s sale of non-performing mortgage loans to three entities in exchange for $15 million.

“Metaxas allegedly orchestrated a fraudulent scheme to give the appearance that the bank was shoring up its finances by selling problem loans to outside investors,” Romero said.

“Metaxas purportedly hid from the bank’s board and regulator the fact that she, with the help of others, made a sham loan to those investors to fund in secret the 25% ‘down payment’ of $3.64 million, a loan that was later written off.  Crimes related to TARP will be investigated and prosecuted by SIGTARP and our law enforcement partners,” Romero added.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/29546-former-ceo-allegedly-faked-toxic-mortgages-to-get-tarp-bailout

Sandy Weill Asks $14M For One of His Two Conn. Manses | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

9 images

Location: Greenwich, Conn. Price: $14,000,000 The Skinny: Former Citigroup CEO and Extremely Rich Person Sandy Weill has listed one of his Greenwich, Conn., homes for $14M, reports the WSJ, which also notes that he’s keeping his other homes in Sonoma County, the Adironacks, New York City (a unit a few floors down from the 15 Central Park West penthouse he sold in Dec. 2011 for a record-setting $88M), the Bahamas, and his second Connecticut manse (which is right next door to this one). So don’t worry about Sandy Weill going homeless! Somehow he’ll muddle through with just the five remaining homes. The story behind the home is instructive: Weill gave the land to his son, who built a house, and then sold the house back to his dad for $11M, who then briefly listed it for $13M back in 2009. Turns out though, that someone had broken the economy, and suddenly “it was a very bad market,” so Weill pulled the listing…until now. The mansion, which was designed by Ira Grandberg, is described by the brokerabble as having “the noble character, elegance, and grandeur of England’s prestigious country estates,” which, translated, means that it’s “misshapen and top-heavy”. Inside the 16,000-square-foot manse there are six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a billiards room, and a cupola with views of Long Island Sound.

 

 

http://curbed.com/archives/2014/04/01/sandy-weill-lists-one-of-his-two-greenwich-mansion-for-14m.php

Credit Scores: Mortgage Lenders Ease Requirements | Waccabuc Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

According to a report prepared by Ellie Mae, a mortgage technology company, the average FICO credit score for approved mortgage loans dropped to 727 in December 2013. It was 748 a year earlier.

The average credit score for home loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also dropped a little; December 2013 borrowers had an average credit score of 756, down from December 2012′s average of 761.

Refinance mortgages backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac were approved with an average credit score of 729 in December 2013; this was a significant drop from the average credit score of 763 in December 2012.

Only 46 percent of mortgage applicants approved had credit scores above 750 in December 2013 while approximately 57 percent of applicants had credit scores over 750 a year earlier. Mortgage Credit Scores: What’s Going On? – –

 

Reasons for approving mortgages with lower minimum credit scores include mortgage lenders’ growing confidence as the economy improves and mortgage defaults decrease.   As rates rise and refinancing activity dries up, lenders may also exercise more flexibility with credit scores in order to encourage more business.

While this isn’t life-changing news for would-be mortgage applicants with sub-par credit scores, a mortgage lender’s willingness to work with less-than-perfect credit is a positive sign in the aftermath of the recession.

But wait — there are conflicting opinions concerning how or if mortgage lenders will change their minimum required credit scores for any but the best-qualified applicants. Mortgage applicants with credit problems can expect to encounter glitches on the path to mortgage approval. Mortgage Underwriting Policies: Out with Overlays — or Not

Another practice that can limit a mortgage applicant’s chances of approval is the use of “lender overlays.” Lender overlays are underwriting requirements, imposed by lenders, in addition to the guidelines set out by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the federal government. Overlays create extra hoops for applicants to jump through (or get stuck in).

Some analysts have said that mortgage lenders may be willing to reduce or eliminate lender overlays if economic conditions continue to improve.

 

 

http://blog.listedby.com/uncategorized/1064/