Category Archives: Mount Kisco

10 beautiful homes in the middle of nowhere | Mt Kisco Real Estate

 

A home is a retreat — a place to escape the outside world, to be alone, to recharge, to relax with friends. For some, one apartment among many in a building wedged into a sea of other buildings provides all the sanctuary they need. But for others, true escape means getting as far away as possible from the rest of the world, to a beautiful and remote residence in a stunning location — with nobody around for miles. Such retreats try very hard not to be found, but we’ve hunted down a few of them for your voyeuristic pleasure, searching high, low, and far to find a collection of lovely, unusual, and isolated homes that truly stand alone. (Just don’t go knocking on their doors.)

 

 

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http://realestate.msn.com/10-beautiful-homes-in-the-middle-of-nowhere

Do little fixes boost home sales? | Mount Kisco Real Estate

 

In some parts of the country, handyman services made up nearly half of all home-improvement projects undertaken in the six-month period before a home sold, according to real estate website Porch.

Real estate agents and sellers prioritize repairs and aesthetic improvements that prospective buyers are likely to notice, such as upgrades to flooring, cabinets, fences and doors, says Matt Ehrlichman, chief executive of Porch, which tracks home-improvement projects.

The Wall Street JournalFor the analysis, details of 675,000 home-improvement projects that had been submitted to Porch by homeowners, architects, builders, real estate agents and others were compared with home listings and sales data from realtor.com, which partners with Porch. The findings: Home sellers in the Northeast and Midwest were most likely to hire a handyman for minor repairs in the six-month period before the home sale. Homeowners in the West were most likely to hire a general contractor for larger improvements. In the South, home sellers were most likely to pay for electrical upgrades and repairs.

“Just doing these minor things will help your house sell quicker and typically for more money,” says Brad Carlson, a real estate agent with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene in The Woodlands, Texas.

Carlson once had the listing for a three-bedroom home with dated brass fixtures throughout. The house sat on the market for over two months with no offers until the seller finally agreed to swap the fixtures for more modern ones. Two days and $800 in new fixtures later, the home sold close to its listing price at $214,900

 

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http://realestate.msn.com/blogs/post–do-little-fixes-boost-home-sales

Laid-Back Comfort in the New York Woods | Mt Kisco Real Estate

 

Thomas Riker, the codesigner of this house and a principal at design firm jamesthomas, calls the area of upstate New York state where it sits the “anti-Hamptons.” The Hamptons, a collection of villages on Long Island bordering the Atlantic, is known as a summer retreat for business titans and celebrity moguls, and the area contains some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. In contrast, “There’s a very Adirondack feeling to this part of upstate New York,” Riker says. “It’s almost like a throwback to a 1950s camp. It’s an area where the homes are quirky and unpretentious.”

This is where a friend whom Riker grew up with in Detroit decided to stake his claim for a weekend family retreat. They purchased a little cabin that had a lot of charm, but they wanted more room for the family — which includes two adults and three teenagers — and large gatherings with friends. It also was in a major state of disrepair. Together he, business partner James Dolenc and architect Leonard Woods made the house much more comfortable for the family while retaining its rustic sensibility.

Award-Winning Modern Country Estate In Dallas Asks $9M | Mt Kisco Real Estate

 

18 images

Location: Dallas, Texas
Price: $8,975,000
The Skinny: This striking modern home outside Dallas opens itself up to the spectacular surrounding scenery with 23-foot walls and windows that wrap around the living room and his and hers offices. The attention to the home’s relation to the outdoors continues with its siting, which maximizes sunlight and theoretically keeps the home evenly illuminated with natural light throughout the day. The design by Dallas firm Oglebsy-Greene—which won a 2010 AIA Interior Architecture Design Award—also includes a dramatic four-story stair tower that extends from the first floor to the rooftop terrace, Douglas fir and Lueders stone finishes throughout, and an open kitchen with gold granite countertops and Gaggenau cooking surfaces. The five-bedroom, seven-bathroom manse has 11,000 square feet of living space and sits on an acre of wooded land with creek and waterfall views. It’s asking $8.975M.

 

 

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http://curbed.com/archives/2014/05/08/award-winning-modern-country-estate-in-dallas-asks-9m.php

Mount Kisco Among Best Places To Live In New York | Mt Kisco Real Estate

 

Real estate blog Movoto.com recently named Mount Kisco the fourth-best place to live in New York.

Movoto compiled a list of municipalities within the state with 10,000 people or more from the 2010 U.S. census. The site then ranked the 87 qualifying areas on the following criteria:

  • Total amenities.
  • Quality of life (cost of living, median home price, median rent, median household income, and student- to-teacher ratio).
  • Total crimes.
  • Tax rates (sales tax and income tax).
  • Unemployment.
  • Commute time.
  • Weather (temperature and air quality).

Mount Kisco ranked in the top 10 in three categories: unemployment (fourth), tax rate (seventh) and quality of life (ninth). The town of nearly 11,000 also excelled in weather, coming in at No.14.

Mount Kisco’s worst category was in commute time, ranking 55th out of 87 communities.

The overall score of 22 for Mount Kisco placed it just behind Mamaroneck, Tarrytown and White Plains, which took the top three spots with scores of 20.71, 21.57 and 21.86, respectively.

Overall, Westchester County communities dominated the top 10, taking 10 spots. Scarsdale, Harrison, Dobbs Ferry, Ossining, Rye and New Rochelle (tied for 10th with Saratoga Springs) all made the top 10.

Port Chester, Peekskill and Yonkers all sat outside the top 10, ranking 12th through 14th, respectively.

 

 

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http://mtkisco.dailyvoice.com/lifestyle/mount-kisco-among-best-places-live-new-york

Home Advisor Cost Guide: Roofing | Mount Kisco Real Estate

Cost Guide: Roofing

When installing a new roof, the biggest decision you’re going to have to make, outside of choosing which roofing pro to hire, is what material to use. If you’re replacing an existing roof this will likely be an easier decision, as there’s a good chance you’ll go with the same material you’re replacing. The decision gets a bit more complicated if you’re building a new home. However, before jumping into the pros and cons of each material, let’s take a look at the two factors that will affect your budget independent of the material you choose.

Not surprisingly, the size of your roof plays a big role in determining the project cost. And if you’re going to be talking to a roofer, it helps to know some of their lingo – specifically, the term they use to measure the size of your roof. While many contractors base their estimates on square footage, roofing pros go by squares, where each square is 100 square feet. So if your roof is 2,000 square feet it will be 20 squares. The more squares, the more the project will cost (most of the time).

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http://welcome.homeadvisor.com/costguide_roofing?m=homesense&entry_point_id=27783150

Super Realtor Man rescues ‘urgent seller’ | Mount Kisco Real Estate

 

Erick Motta, owner of Fresno, Calif.-based Home Star, is tired of watching YouTube videos of agents pitching themselves to potential clients.

So to set his brokerage apart, he decided to produce a different kind of promotional video. Motta — the latest winner of Inman News #madREskillz contest – cast himself as Superman.

In the video, Motta soars across Fresno, Calif. to answer the call of a client who must sell her home in 24 hours. The video is a spoof on the viral hit “Superman With a GoPro,” and is designed to showcase Home Star’s expertise with video marketing, Motta said.

Like “Superman with a GoPro,” Motta’s video features what is supposed be first-person footage of a superhero flying through the atmosphere.

The video opens with animation showing a conversation between “Super Realtor Man,” played by Motta, and a damsel in distress, the “urgent seller.” Home Star bought the animation sequence from VideoHive, and filled the dialogue bubbles with original content, Motta said.

“When do you need to sell it by?” Super Realtor Man asks in the video.

“By Friday,” she says — not next week, but tomorrow.

 

 

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http://www.inman.com/2014/05/02/super-realtor-man-rescues-urgent-seller/?utm_source=20140502&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam

‘I was right, the housing recovery was a sham’: The Guardian’s Heidi Moore | Mt Kisco Real Estate

 

The housing market appears to be hurting. Last week we learned that sales of new homes plunged 14.5% in March compared to February, while sales of existing homes fell slightly month-to-month, too. Meanwhile, demand for home loans have hit a 14-year low in the first quarter, according to industry newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance.

But today the National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales in March rose for the first time in nine months. They were up 3.4% from February, but down 7.9% from a year ago.

Heidi Moore, U.S. finance and economics editor at The Guardian, called the housing recovery a sham last June and in the video above says the latest run of weak data suggests the same concerns she raised when the recovery was humming along last summer. Moore says the recent slowdown reveals the recovery was in fact “dubious” and based on investor demand versus real homebuyers.

Others blame this year’s unseasonably cold weather along with higher mortgage rates for the slow start to the spring selling season. “Weather has been blamed for a lot, and it’s true it has some role, but there are so many other metrics that go in the direction of real trouble,” says Moore. “People haven’t been able to borrow for a mortgage for years — that has nothing to do with the weather, I promise you.” The same goes for issues like rising prices and low supply, she adds.

When it comes to the impact of these real estate conditions more broadly, Neil Irwin argues in the New York Times’ Upshot that the housing market is still stalling the economy. He points out that investment in residential property remains a smaller share of the overall economy than at any time since World War II, contributing less to growth than in past downturns, including the early 1980s when mortgage rates were 20% (compared to 4.5% currently).

Irwin argues if more people were buying homes and building returned to its postwar average as a share of the economy, growth would jump to 4% and about 1.5 million more jobs would be created. He says the main factor holding housing back is demand: Fewer people can or want to start a household of their own.

In Moore’s view, it’s the other way around: It’s the economy that’s slowing the housing market. Factors including stagnant wages, high unemployment and high household and student loan debt are reasons why people aren’t able to buy houses, says Moore. In other words, because the economy is stuck, the housing market is too.

 

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http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/i-was-right–the-housing-recovery-was-a-sham–guardian-s-heidi-moore-191918931.html

Where are homebuilders breaking ground? | Mt Kisco Real Estate

 

While it is difficult to gauge the economy across the nation and in regional markets, these two charts from PulteGroup (PHM) and D.R. Horton (DHI) help to paint a decent picture.

However, keep in mind that the two homebuilders do not operate in every market.

PulteGroup currently builds in 26 states and posted first-quarter net income Thursday morning of $75 million, or 19 cents per share.

Meanwhile, D.R. Horton operates in 27 states and posted first-quarter net income for its second fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2014 of $131 million, or 38 cents per diluted share.

So how does this disperse regionally?

According to Pulte’s earnings, most regions witnessed a drawback in regional home closings in the first quarter, with the southwest falling from 734 last quarter to 468. The only region to experience an uptick was the northeast, which grew from 302 to 343 closings. (click picture for bigger image)

 

 

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Where are homebuilders breaking ground?

Home values in 20 percent of US housing markets headed for record highs within a year | Mount Kisco Real Estate

 

Home values in almost 20 percent of all U.S. metros will surpass their housing boom peaks over the next year, and affordability problems that have begun to affect a fraction of markets may spread to others over the next few years, Zillow reported.

“The lows of the housing recession are becoming an increasingly distant memory as home values reach new highs and homes become more expensive than ever in many areas,” said Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries in a statement. “This is a remarkable milestone coming only two and a half years after the end of the worst housing recession since the Great Depression.”

Home values nationwide were up 0.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2014, and were up 5.7 percent from the same time a year ago, according to the latest Zillow Real Estate Market Report.

Over the next year, Zillow forecasts that national home prices will appreciate by an additional 3.3 percent.

Price gains have already pushed values close to or above their housing boom peak in about 12 percent of the 8,700 markets tracked by Zillow.

Among the more than 300 metros tracked by Zillow, home values in nearly 20 percent of them have already passed or are expected to pass their prerecession peaks over the next year. Those fully or almost fully recovered metros include Dallas, Houston, Denver, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Texas, San Jose, Calif., and Austin, Texas.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2014/04/22/home-values-in-20-percent-of-u-s-housing-markets-will-be-more-expensive-than-ever-within-a-year/?utm_source=20140422&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinespm#sthash.lzVRtVwk.dpuf