If you’re in the market for a new home, chances are you’ll have to compromise at some point along the way. Maybe you’ll have to commute a little farther than you’d like in order to get the best value for your money. Or perhaps you’ll forgo a huge backyard to be closer to the city.
And when it comes to finances, you might find a disparity between how much house you want and how much house you can purchase given your gross monthly income and other factors.
Home loans are made against your ability to repay. While the mortgage loan is secured against the house, it is really made against your income. That’s what mortgage lenders look for — income to offset liabilities.
Simply put, the amount of income you need to purchase a house will vary by your payment comfort level, including any other monthly debt obligations you might have.
Important terms
Mortgage payment: Principal, interest, property taxes insurance and mortgage insurance, if needed
Consumer debts: Minimum payment obligations on things such as auto loans, credit cards, student loans, personal loans and installment loans
Other debt obligations: Alimony and/or child support or any other court-ordered repayment obligations
Running the math
Here’s a simple formula to calculate the amount of income you’ll need to purchase a home:
Target mortgage payment + consumer debts ÷ .36 = Gross monthly income needed to qualify
Most lenders limit your debt-to-income ratio (how much of your monthly income pays debt) to between 36 percent and 45 percent. While the exact ratio varies by lender and loan type, it’s best to base your calculations on the lower end to ensure that you won’t overextend yourself financially.
So, if your target mortgage payment is $2,000 per month and you have consumer debts of $300 per month, you will need $6,388 gross monthly income to offset your housing expenses and consumer obligations.
Down payment
Your down payment is another important factor in determining how much income you’ll need to buy a home.
Consider the following loan scenario using a purchase price of $300,000 (assuming no other debts) and the current rates on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.
Conventional loan
- Down payment: 5 percent ($15,000)
- Interest rate: 3.26 percent
- Approximate mortgage payment: $1,770
- Gross monthly income needed: $4,916
So at the end of the day how much income you need to purchase a home is predicated on your monthly income, consumer debt obligations and down payment.
Impact of debt
For every dollar of debt, you will need double that in income. So if you have a $300 car payment, you’ll need at least $600 per month or more in income to offset that debt.
Debt erodes income, and less income translates to less purchasing power.
So, does buying a home make sense?
Yes, so long as the amount you can borrow from Personal Loan Lenders for your desired purchase price is in sync with your debt obligations and, of course, your down payment.
Category Archives: North Salem
Celebrities and the wealthy find ways to keep home sales secret | Pound Ridge Real Estate
Madonna is selling her Beverly Hills estate, but she doesn’t want you to know about it.
The sinewy singer is asking $28 million for the 16,500-square-foot, French-Normandy-style mansion. You won’t find it, however, on the Multiple Listing Service, Realtor.com or other online marketplaces. Her real estate agent is quietly shopping it among a select network of Los Angeles-area brokers with deep-pocket clients.
This velvet-rope tactic, known as a “pocket listing,” is being used more and more by celebrities and the wealthy in this TMZ age, say real estate agents specializing in high-end properties. Listing publicly just invites paparazzi mischief. With word-of-mouth marketing, there’s no for-sale sign on the front lawn or snoops traipsing through open houses.
Actress Meg Ryan and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel are among the wide-ranging contingent that has bought or sold through pocket listings in the last year.
Also fueling the pursuit of privacy, experts say, is the change in the economy.
The well-to-do have a stronger sense of needing to protect themselves and raise the drawbridge on the details of their lives, said clinical psychologist Stephen Goldbart, the coauthor of “Affluence Intelligence.”
A recent convert to pocket listings is Randy Phillips, chief executive of concert-promotion powerhouse AEG Live, who sold a house late last year outside the MLS. The gated estate he had renovated in Beverly Hills went for $15.5 million, more than Phillips expected to get.
“It’s the only way to sell a great house,” said Phillips, who has a passion for restoring homes. “Once it’s in the MLS, it ages like bread on a shelf.”
Pocket listings have become the signature niche of Ben Bacal of Sotheby’s International Realty in the Hollywood Hills, who estimates about 70% of his business comes from such deals. He worked with Phillips on his sale and sold several other multimillion-dollar houses in Beverly Hills that way.
Bacal plans to expand his role with the launch of an exclusive agent platform for pocket listings. His website already boasts “pocket lister” in anticipation of its start in January.
“It’s a more sensible, low-key way to sell,” he said, and keep a transaction “hush-hush.”
For Matt Pernice of NW Real Estate Brokers in Manhattan Beach, pocket listings are flourishing, making up to a third of all deals in the South Bay communities of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach. The beach cities are popular with professional athletes and the occasional actor because the ritzy coastal location is close to Los Angeles International Airport and the Lakers‘ and Kings’ training facilities in El Segundo.
Pernice also markets the benefits of pocket listings on his website as a buying tool for finding the best homes in a low-inventory market as well as a way to create a layer of privacy.
Some sellers don’t want a sign in the ground, Pernice said. “They don’t want the neighbors to know.”
Beyond pocket listings, a traditional way for well-heeled property owners to shield their identities is to buy real estate in the name of a trust.
A trust name can be whatever the buyer wants. Pernice has seen an increase in the use of Asian trust names among celebrities, perhaps hoping to blend into the sea of international buyers in the Los Angeles housing market.
Not all stars have managed to keep a low profile. Singer Britney Spears‘ use of the Love Shack Trust to buy and sell houses — including the sale this year of her Italian Renaissance-inspired villa in Studio City for $4.253 million — attracted attention because it was so specific.
“You want generic names,” said Jim Cody, managing director for estate, trust and philanthropy services at the national firm Harris myCFO. “The more general the name, the better. When you Google that name you are going to get millions of hits.”
But even mundane names can lose the cloak of invisibility. Nicolas Cage‘s Hancock Park Real Estate Trust became commonly known when he lost his Bel-Air trophy home to tax problems.
In recent years, many wealthy real estate buyers have turned to limited liability companies, Cody said. That legal entity limits an owner’s liability and, like a trust, can use a fictitious name.
Local officials against insurance hike | Mount Kisco NY Real Estate
The Onslow County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution Monday night against the proposed insurance rate increase and asked residents to join them in protesting the hike in Raleigh on Wednesday.
“It makes me plain sick,” said Onslow County Chairman W.C. Jarman, adding that it’s time for the inequitable increases to stop.
The rate hike could mean an average 30-percent increase in homeowner policies across 18 coastal counties including Onslow and Carteret counties while western counties see barely an increase at all, according to the rate filing from the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which represents property insurance companies doing business in the state.
A public comment period is set for Wednesday.
“I think folks should go and should say they are against it,” said State Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown, R-Onslow. Brown pushed for legislation last year that created the public comment session in front of the state insurance commissioner.
The N.C. Department of Insurance said last week that it received the requested rate hike from the NCRB at a statewide average increase of 17.7 percent. The NCRB is also requesting that the new rates take effect June 1, 2013.
The increase is unfair to counties east of I-95, said state Rep. Phil Shepard, R-Onslow.
“A homeowner with a house valued at $75,000 in Mecklenburg County pays $341 for insurance,” Shepard said. “A homeowner with the same valued house in Onslow County pays $1,200. That’s just not fair and they want to raise it 30 percent here and next to nothing there.”
While coastal counties see a 30 percent increase, other areas of the state would see increases of only 1.2 percent. Coastal homeowners have seen rate increases every cycle since 1992.
NC-20, a group of individuals, local governments and businesses that promote economic development in coastal counties, said it fought against the 2009 rate increases and plans to oppose this increase as well.
Onslow County Manager Jeff Hudson said he was organizing a trip to Raleigh for residents to be able to speak in front of the commissioner. Hudson said the county couldn’t use tax dollars to pay for the bus so he was seeking funds from local business organizations.
The Jacksonville Board of Realtors, the Jacksonville-Onslow Chamber of Commerce and the Onslow County Home Builders Association have partnered to charter a bus to Raleigh on Wednesday morning. The bus will depart from the county parking lot adjacent to the Onslow County Justice Complex on Court Street at 7:30 a.m.
Canada housing market cools as household debt grows | North Salem NY Real Estate
Learn How Mobile Will Change Media Forever | Pound Ridge NY Homes
California Leads U.S. Out of Housing Bust It Started | Mount Kisco Realtor
Listing inventories down in most markets | Mount Kisco NY Real Estate
Editor’s note: This report is based on Realtor.com’s September 2012 Real Estate Trend Data Report. The report covers 146 U.S. metros, and includes single-family homes, condos, townhomes and co-ops.
The number of homes for sale nationwide continued to fall in September from a year ago, Realtor.com reported today. The 17.77 percent drop to 1.8 million units continues a trend that’s played out in every month this year so far.
For-sale inventory dropped on a year-over-year basis in all but three of the 146 markets tracked by Realtor.com in its report.
Nationwide, median list prices were up 0.78 percent from August to September, to $191,500 and have held steady throughout 2012 — another sign that the housing recovery is solidifying, the report noted. However, median list prices are still 23.37 percent off their early 2007 high of $249,900.
Annual change in listings, inventory and median list price
Data point Percent change from year ago 2012 September 2012 Number of listings -17.77% 1.80 million Median age of inventory (days) -11.21% 95 Median list price +0.78% $191,500 Source: Realtor.com
Article continues belowThe number of homes for sale nationwide was down 40 percent from a September 2007 high of 3.1 million units. The median age of inventory was also down 11.21 percent on a yearly basis to 95 days. However, that number represents a 4.4 percent increase from August.
Source: Realtor.comAs was the case last in August, California markets continue to dominate a top 10 chart of markets that have experienced the largest year-over-year drop in inventory. Tight inventories and lending standards are two of the California housing market’s biggest challenges to full recovery, said Leslie Appleton-Young, California Association of Realtor’s vice president and chief economist.
Stockton-Lodi, Calif., topped the chart with a 63.04 percent drop in inventory between September 2011 and September 2012. Sacramento, Oakland, and Riverside-San Bernardino (Calif.) rounded out the top four, in order, with drops in inventory of 60.26 percent, 57.14 percent and 42.57 percent, respectively.
Seattle-Bellevue-Everett (No. 9 at a 38.34 percent drop) and Atlanta (No. 10 at a 37.15 percent drop) were the only two metros on the list not in California.
Top 10 markets for annual inventory declines, September 2012
Percent change -63.04% -60.26% -57.14% -42.57% -41.97% -41.26% -38.92% -38.39% -38.34% -37.15% Source: Realtor.com
California metros also made up the majority of the top 10 metros experiencing the largest year-over-year percentage median list price increases. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Lompoc, Calif., topped the list at a year-over-year jump of 32.05 percent in its median list price. San Francisco (No. 3), San Jose (No. 4), Sacramento (No. 6), Oakland (No. 7), and Riverside-San Bernardino (No. 9) were the other Golden State metros on the list.
Source: Realtor.comPhoenix-Mesa, Ariz. (No. 2 at 26.66 percent), Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash. (No. 5 at 14.98 percent), Boise City, Idaho (No. 7 at 13.33 percent) and Atlanta (No. 10 at 11.94 percent) were the non-California metros on the top list for the largest year-over-year median list price increase.
Top 10 metros for annual median list price increases, September 2012
Percent change 32.05% 26.66% 18.11% 17.50% 14.98% 14.23% 13.97% 13.33% 12.56% 11.94% Source: Realtor.com
How to convince buyers they’re getting a bargain | North Salem Real Estate
As we discussed last week, the fields of behavioral economics and behavioral finance were created in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of how real people make financial decisions in real life.
Fortunately for all of us, these fields — which draw from the behavioral sciences, economics and personal finance — have generated some findings that are anything but academic. These findings include some powerful insights for those of us trying to make decisions about buying and selling our homes.
Following on last week’s top four behavioral economics insights for homebuyers, here are a handful of the field’s top takeaways for sellers, to help manage your own mindset and to optimize the way you market your home to buyers:
1. Don’t let overconfidence lead to overpricing. Real estate agents are the only commissioned salespeople I know of who, as a general rule, spend much of their time trying to talk their clients down in pricing their product. Why? Because real estate agents know that listing a home at too high a price causes unnecessary woe, drama and failure. Set the listing price too high, and a home will lag on the market, attracting lowball offers. The end result is often a price reduction, or even (worst case) the home doesn’t sell at all.
Overpricing can result from the same overconfidence and overoptimism that causes buyers to make lowball offers on great homes in a hot market and inspires investors to day trade, erroneously thinking they have superhuman stock picking skills. In fact, when you study up on successful amateur day traders, it becomes clear that what they have is less innate skill and more the willingness to voraciously, constantly research the companies and the markets — many, for hours every single day. Many have also placed rules on themselves specifically to counter their own human emotions and irrational tendencies.
And that’s precisely how home sellers can and should deactivate overconfidence when it comes to pricing: Commit to the exercise of sitting down with your agent and poring over the data about what’s going on in your market, the data about what homes have recently sold for in your area, even the data on how long it takes the average home in your market to sell and what the list price-to-sale price ratios are in your area.
It takes time and discipline, but while you’re looking through the comps, your agent can show you the potential rewards: Every market has well-priced, well-marketed homes that sell quickly.
2. Understand the endowment effect. Lest you think, like so many do, that the above point is great for all those other clueless sellers, but certainly doesn’t apply to your innate, uncanny eye for knowing what homes are truly worth, allow me to introduce you to a little something called the endowment effect. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely explains it as follows:
“Simply put, the endowment effect shows that we value the things we own more than identical products that we don’t own. This causes a mismatch between buyers and sellers, where buyers are often willing to spend less than the seller deems an acceptable price.”
Just knowing that what you think is your personal prowess for price-setting is actually a thought fallacy that researchers have known about for years might help you stay committed to making your pricing decision based on the data rather than your fallible gut.
3. Consider offering rebates and credits. Beyond using behavioral econ and finance knowledge to optimize your own decisions, smart sellers can take clues from these fields as to how to max out their marketing to buyers. One such clue is this: Offer rebates, or closing-cost credits.
Retailers and big brands have long known that offering a rebate makes buyers feel better — and less hesitant — about making a purchase, giving them the sense that they will get a bonus or a gift for spending.
This same effect applies with real estate: If you can price your home competitively with similar, nearby listings and offer a closing-cost credit to the eventual buyer, you boost your home’s attractiveness and ability to compete with other listings considerably, reducing the amount of cash a buyer will have to bring in to close the sale and making it that much easier for a buyer to get off the fence.
4. Tell prospective buyers a story. The Atlantic recently did a deep dive into consumer implications of behavioral economics. The article revealed that buyers are more inclined to make purchases where the circumstances of the marketing actually tell the buyers a story that makes them feel like they are getting a bargain, as happened when Williams-Sonoma put a $500 bread maker next to a $300 one and realized that no one bought the expensive one, but sales of the lower-priced machine doubled because of the deal people thought they were getting.
I’m going to take this one further: Don’t just tell a story to make buyers feel like they are getting a good deal when they’re not. But do provide materials to tell buyers the story of the deal they are getting: Keep a binder in the property with the competitive comparables that you believe your home is priced well against. Market your home with photos and descriptions that surface the value your home holds compared to the competition.
And don’t stop there: Stage your home in a way that tells your buyers the story of the life they could lead in your home, whatever that ideal life is for the average buyer who wants a home like yours. And consider writing a love letter about your home and your neighborhood, telling buyers the story of how well loved the home was, and creating a compelling sense of well-being around it.
Relevant is the New Black – Stop Sucking and Start Mattering | Pound Ridge Real Estate
This isn’t breaking news or an exclusive by any means.
If I did years of extensive research, analyzed data, built fancy charts, used 3-D graphs on my iPad, and touted inarguable, NAR homebuyer and seller survey-backed findings, it would lead to just five words.
Follow-up in real estate sucks.
I define “sucks” two different ways.
The first: It sucks that there is not more time in each day to follow up with people you have already built a good relationship with or helped buy or sell a home. If someone is not currently in the market to buy or sell, only so many minutes can be allotted to relationship maintenance.
Especially, I should add, if you actually produce significant GCI (gross commission income) or carry a lot of listings.
I wish there were a perfect world. One where all you did was chit-chatted with friends on Facebook all day whom you worked with previously, just calling your sphere to say hello and asking how the kids are.
Too bad you are busy as hell and reality is such an important thing to consider when running a business.
Bottom line? Past clients and referrals make or break your business, but you could likely receive more if you followed up effectively.
The other way follow-up sucks in real estate is that it lacks the most important thing in marketing right now: context.
As the social Web has evolved, experiences are becoming increasingly personalized. This includes ads and marketing messages that we are exposed to.
This change means you need to completely re-evaluate your follow-up marketing strategy with your sphere of influence.
Here’s why: When an ad runs in my stream on Facebook that says, “Are you 33? Do you love your iPad? Kids using it too?” The answers are yes and yes and yes. I actually welcome ads like that with open arms. I can’t wait to click them and see where they lead.
Meanwhile in the real estate industry I see marketing like: fajita recipe cards, sports calendars, set-your-clock-back reminders, open house invitations, emailed market reports, and just listed/just sold postcards.
These are things that lack context with 95 percent of people with a pulse.
You have to go deeper in 2012.
In fact, either dig deep or go to sleep (feel free to tweet that).
With everything you do moving forward, please take a moment and ask yourself, whether it is a post card, business card, Facebook update, tweet or phone call, “Is this RELEVANT to the recipient?”
Don’t bullshit here either. Be honest with yourself. It’s critical.
Relevant is the new black.
Contactually, a popular new social CRM (customer relationship manager), can help your efforts towards increased relevancy, both tremendously and immediately.
It makes staying in touch with the right contacts fun and simple. I especially enjoy the way it helps you segment your social and email databases into relevant categories. It happens in an interactive game called “The bucket game.” It’s a jovial and quick way to get your unorganized list of contacts into one or more categories (like buyer, seller, past client, Facebook friend, etc.) By approaching this tedious task with a gaming approach, it is actually really fun and you are done in no time at all.
Contactually connects your email and social media accounts, analyzes your history with each relationship, and automatically prompts you in a daily email to re-engage with important people who are slipping off your radar.
By leveraging the social graph, anytime you call, email, tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn message someone from Contactually, you have what is relevant to them, in real time, in the form of their live social streams. If their latest tweet was about their kid’s baseball game, there is your reason to call.
The paid version of Contactually also brings integration into Gmail, Salesforce, Highrise, and many other popular and robust CRMs.
Increased context and relevancy with your sphere of influence, with a little help from a software. I dig it.
Of all the dings in your agent armor, an important person slipping off your radar should be considered a big, fat dent. Avoided at all costs.
If your current marketing efforts are extinguishing more interest in what you do than they are generating actual new business, time for a pivot.
You can learn more about Contactually or sign up for a 30-day free trial now.
Or you can reorder sports calendars for 2013. The choice is yours.
Knicks Star Carmelo Anthony & Wife La La Looking for New Digs | Pound Ridge NY Realtor News
Carmelo Anthony will soon be on the move.
No, not from the New York Knicks, whom he joined last year and signed a three-year, $67 million contact extension to become the face of the Big Apple’s NBA franchise. Instead, Melo and his reality TV star wife, La La, are out looking for a new Manhattan apartment to rent, now that their current pad at The Hit Factory has hit the market.
Melo rented the 3,800-square foot penthouse duplex at 421-429 W 54th St, New York, NY 10019 after his trade to New York from the Denver Nuggets last February, but there will be no lease extension now that the 4-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom condo is listed for sale for $5.75 million.
According to the New York Post, La La Anthony was spotted in the Upper East Side looking for the couple’s next NYC abode, which has to include room for their young son.
The Hit Factory is a 25-unit condo building in Columbus Circle that once housed one of the most famous recording studios in the world — a place where everyone from the Rolling Stones to Bruce Springsteen to John Lennon to Mariah Carey cranked out some of the greatest and best-selling music recordings in history.
But for Anthony, who actively sought to move his career to New York after refusing a contract extension with the Nuggets, it’s not music history he cares about. He wants to return the wayward Knicks to NBA playoff prominence, and with a contract that runs through the end of the 2014-2015 season, the All-Star knows his time in New York could be short and intense, if he doesn’t deliver.
Maybe that’s why Melo and his savvy wife, who stars on the VH1 hit “La La’s Full Court Life,” are not rushing to buy any pricy NYC real estate, but instead will continue to be renters.











