Category Archives: Lewisboro

Ideas to Protect Coasts from Storm Surge | Katonah NY Homes

Leave a reply

In locations prone to storm surge flooding, zoning and code rules adopted at the state and local level require special measures to make homes safer from damage or destruction in a major storm. But hundreds of thousands of houses, commercial buildings, public structures, and industrial facilities already exist in flood-threatened areas, and fixing one building or facility at a time could take centuries—at a cost that boggles the minds of policy-makers.

So the Federal Government is looking to industry and academia for solutions that might work at a neighborhood scale, or even a regional scale. So far, policymakers are still at the brainstorming stage: This week, Shaun Donovan, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, selected 10 project concepts from a candidate pool of 41 proposals submitted by teams of experts. It’s all part of the “Rebuild by Design” competition, launched last June by HUD as an effort of the Hurricane Sandy Task Force.

Reports the Washington Post: “The winning ideas include an array of strategies for making the coastline more resilient in an age of rising seas, including natural breakwaters that could take the punch out of storm surf headed for Staten Island, a ring of water-trapping canals and parks for Hoboken, N.J., and channels in Long Beach, N.Y., that would help drain Long Island’s coastal bays during storms or periods of heavy rain.” (For the full Post item, see: “Federal officials pick 10 ideas for making NY, NJ coastlines more resilient after Sandy,” by Associated Press).

Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of the ideas will ever become reality—or even that any of them will. Some could require billions of dollars in public funding—although other proposals, like the “Big U” concept suggested by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingals, might not. The Danes argue that major, big-ticket public works are hard to accomplish and may do more harm than good. Instead, they’re proposing a medley of smaller projects that address flood risks at the neighborhood or street level, which could be constructed independently on different schedules.

 

http://www.jlconline.com/stormwater-management/ideas-to-protect-coasts-from-storm-surge.aspx

 

All Aboard Florida’s Ft. Laud. Station Will Be In Flagler Village | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

1471153_625863684123931_1253086907_n.jpg

All Aboard Florida is planning to announce on November 22nd that their Fort Lauderdale train station will be just north of Broward Boulevard, in Flagler Village. The Las Olas Riverfront site is out. It will likely span the tracks from the empty Florida Power & Light lot on the west side of the railroad tracks between Broward and NW 2nd Avenue to the Broward Central Terminal bus depot on the east side of the tracks, a location that was established as the preferred spot on the railroad’s environmental assessment report. This completes selection of the project’s four station locations in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando.

Also in the environmental assessment report (it was full of goodies), the station, which will be designed by firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Zyscovich, will be centered around a great hall with an elevated waiting room and concourse above the tracks connecting to a 35 foot wide central platform. Sure, it won’t be as monumental as the Miami terminus station, but it won’t exactly be dinky either. · Fort Lauderdale FEC Station [Curbed Miami] · All Aboard Florida coverage [Curbed Miami]

A Pond House in the Arizona Desert | South Salem Homes

Leave a reply

Some of the best modern residential architecture can be found in the U.S. desert Southwest. Phoenix can be considered the epicenter of many of these houses, which seem to rise from the desert through the use of materials like stone and Cor-Ten steel. About 30 miles north of Phoenix is the Pond House, a 1,775-square-foot weekend house designed by Will Bruder, an architect who trained under Paolo Soleri (famous for devoting much of his life to realizing the experimental desert town of Arcosanti). Perched above part of Cave Creek in the upper Bajada desert, the Pond House is skillfully integrated into the landscape, giving a great view of it and being a part of it.
Builder: 180 Degrees Photography by Bill Timmerman

The view from the southeast, looking at the back of the house, shows the water feature that gives the house its name. This “year-round swimming hole,” as Bruder calls it, is an obvious amenity for the weekend retreat.
The front of the house, facing west, is much more opaque, defined by Cor-Ten steel walls that rise from the desert landscape. The curved wall in the foreground defines the edge of the property adjacent to the unpaved approach road. This wall, also Cor-Ten steel, is just out of frame to the right, to allow access to the house; a detached garage lies just beyond the opening.
As you drive alongside the house, its entry is signaled by a couple of small windows above a low roof next to the curved site wall. The rising Cor-Ten wall and roof reach a peak and then descend, only to turn into a stone wall.
Here we are at the break in the curved Cor-Ten site wall, where a water feature rises from the pavement. Water flows over the concrete walls of the fountain to descend toward the house’s entry.
In this dusk shot, the descent to the entrance is clearer, as is the way the stones follow the angle of the wall, something Bruder says gives “a sense of mythical ruins of past cultures.” Perhaps, but It reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, particularly the rising and descending angular forms. Moving inside we’ll see other details that further recall Wright’s Southwestern home.

Brokers blanket entire neighborhoods with mass mailings to scare up sellers | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

Real estate brokers in the Charlotte, N.C., region are doing mass mailings to entire neighborhoods and even knocking on doors to let homeowners know that if they want to sell, there are plenty of buyers.

The supply of existing homes in the 18-county area fell to 5.3 months in October, down from 6.9 months the same time a year ago and 10.4 months in October 2011, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Many underwater homeowners are waiting for further price gains before putting their homes on the market, Champ Claris of Berkshire HomeServices Carolinas Realty told the paper.

 

 

Source: charlotteobserver.com – See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/brokers-blanketing-entire-neighborhoods-with-mass-mailings-to-scare-up-sellers/#sthash.yxZkAbIg.dpuf

Tour The Touraine’s Last Remaining Penthouse, Asking $20M | Katonah Real Estate

Leave a reply

Toll Brothers’ Upper East Side Touraine opened for sale at the end of 2011, and Penthouse 1 actually hit the market not long after. A sprawling duplex on the top two floors of the Lucien Lagrange-designed building, reps opted not to aggressively market the 5BR/5.5BA unit until recently, when the building at Lexington Avenue and 65th Street was almost finished and it could be properly staged. Curbed photographer Will Femia captured the detailing (marble, marble everywhere), views, and other elements of the 4,326-square-foot space, which is asking a mere $19,995,990. The other three penthouses went for $5,820,688, $9,771,116, and $13,579,371, respectively, which hints at the mammoth scale of this unsold unit. The rest of the 22-condo building has sold and closed, with some apartments already turned around as rentals.

  • First, a look at the two-tiered floorplan to orient yourself.
  • The PH is located on the top two floors of the Touraine, shot here from the north.
  • The PH from the outside.
  • Beginning on the lower floor, this is the guest bedroom on the western side of the apartment.
  • Its accompanying bathroom…
  • … and the view form the tub.

 

 

 

 

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/11/14/tour_the_touraines_last_remaining_penthouse_asking_20m.php

6 Reasons Social Media Is Critical To Your SEO | South Salem Real Estate

Leave a reply

Once upon a time, “the old SEO” ruled the website marketing world. This was during the early, pioneering days of online marketing — before it was typical for a small business to have a website and long before your grandmother had an online presence that could rival a teenager. The old SEO strategy centered around one primary factor: Link Building. But today, link building as a direct SEO tactic is completely dead. The fact is, Google has found smarter ways to measure the popularity of your website: it’s called social media.

The fact that social media is critical to your online presence (and your search engine rankings) is often a tough pill for small business owners to swallow. It can be a difficult marketing strategy to measure, and it can seem like a strange way to grow their business.

But the days of easily measuring your SEO strategy are long gone. It’s no longer about building X amount of links and creating Y amount of optimized content pages on your website. These old approaches to getting search engine attention are very static. The new strategy is about being dynamic, engaged, and interactive within your marketplace and when acquiring SEO for commercial real estate companies. Social media is the only place you can make that happen.

Here are six reasons social media needs to be an important part of your website marketing and SEO strategy for years to come:

1. Link building was always about social proofing.

Think about it – why did Google ever allow links to determine which websites ranked above all the others? The answer is simple: links were like “votes” for your website. The more votes you get, the better off you are. So SEO companies started building links (aka “votes”) manually. Then, Google — to counter all of the fake voting — figured out that some votes should count more than other votes. So SEO companies went around manufacturing websites with the best votes. And Google, finally, realized that SEO link building would never work long-term for ranking websites. So Google started penalizing websites with “fake votes” (which is basically anyone who pays a company to do SEO link building for them). Seeing a trend here? The idea behind links as a ranking factor is a very good idea, but since it’s become so easy to manipulate, Google has been forced to turn to social media channels which do the same thing but are much harder to manipulate. Link building was always about social proofing.

2. Social media allows you to “crowd source” your link building.

When you have a following on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, you create a team of fans who can share your content. That’s what social media is all about, folks — being social! (Imagine that.) So when you write a new blog post on your business blog, you can take that content and share it on Twitter and then get some of your followers to share your content. You can also get your website visitors to share pages of your site and your blog on social media by adding simple social buttons to allow people to quickly and easily “vote” for your content right there on your website. Sure, many of these people will never become your actual customers, but that’s not your objective here. Your objective is to build buzz and attention around your website.

3. Being social is the fastest way to multiply your presence online.

The problem with old school SEO link building is your always building “signs” to your website in places where nobody is looking. It’s something like buying a billboard in the desert. Social media, on the other hand, is a dynamic world of interaction and activity where things are constantly happening in real time. This is why it’s so crucial that you have a social media PRESENCE — not just social media accounts where you never or rarely post anything. You’ve got to be active, you’ve got to be social. This is the fastest way to multiply your online presence simply because it’s where everyone is. If you get in front of the right people (which is a matter of consistency, not luck) then you can build some buzz around your business and your website.

4. Social signals is a real thing.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “social signals” floating around out there. Love it or hate it, this is a real thing. Google is definitely measuring your website’s “pulse rate” on social media channels. How often do you share content on social channels? How often do people visit your website for social channels? How many fans/followers do you have? Does your website have social sharing elements available for visitors? Social signals really is the new “link building” metric you should be concerned about and worried about. Forget about how many links you have — especially if you’re building fake links — and start worrying about the health of your social media presence.

http://socialmediatoday.com/stephaniefrasco/1901891/

Being ‘tech savvy’ is not what gets real estate agents business | Cross River Realtor

Leave a reply

I reject the idea that younger people can earn a living as real estate agents just because they are “tech savvy,” and that this somehow gives them an advantage that enables them to compete with more experienced agents.

I believe that there is plenty of business for agents young and old, and that we should encourage young people to join our profession. But we might be going about it all wrong. The Internet has been around for more than 30 years. Smartphones have been with us, in one form or another, for 15 years.

Before that we had the Palm Pilot. Many of us “old” agents have evolved, adapted and kept up with the times.

Some of us have even been innovators and early adopters of technology like the iPad, which some experts told us would be useless for business. In some real estate associations and offices, I see an emphasis on having young, “tech savvy” agents teaching older agents about technology.

I think the future of the real estate industry would be better served if older, more experienced agents spent more time teaching younger agents how to be real estate agents.“Young Professionals Networks” (YPNs) for real estate agents have sprung up all over the country.

Many of them offer opportunities for agents to go to bars and parties and social events and network with each other. They also offer occasional educational opportunities that focus on how to use technology.

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/15/being-tech-savvy-is-not-what-get-real-estate-agents-business/#sthash.NkQxJR9S.dpuf

Overheated’ San Francisco market cools off | Katonah NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

The number of homes and condos sold in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area fell 3.9 percent in October from a year ago, a level that’s 11.2 percent below the historic average for the month.

The San Francisco Chronicle said despite the decrease in sales, to 7,595 homes and condos, price appreciation has continued in the “overheated” market.

 

 

Source: sfgate.com. – See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/overheated-san-francisco-market-cools-off/#sthash.wedGnhiY.dpuf

Realogy and Trulia might make a nice couple, but are they really headed to the altar? | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

Rumors that real estate behemoth Realogy may be in talks to acquire Trulia pushed the price of the listing portal’s shares up 10 percent before markets closed today, but analysts who follow the companies didn’t think much of all the talk.

Realogy — which runs some of the biggest brands in real estate including Coldwell Banker Real Estate, Century 21 Real Estate and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate — declined to comment. So did Trulia.

Stock analysts who follow the companies said the merger chatter — which put a $52-per-share price target on Trulia, implying a deal in the $2 billion range — was probably just that.

“To me, it feels like a bogus rumor because someone needed to get out of a position,” said Bradley Safalow, founder and CEO of stock analysis firm PAA Research.

Zachary Prensky, managing partner of Little Bear Investments, said he thought the rumor was a “complete fabrication.”

Still, suggestions that an established real estate company like Realogy would (or should) make a play for a listing portal like  Zillow or Trulia have been in play this year.

 

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/11/13/realogy-and-trulia-might-make-a-nice-couple-but-are-they-really-headed-to-the-altar/#sthash.0v2xongA.dpuf