Category Archives: Pound Ridge

China’s falling real-estate prices trigger protests, clashes | Pound Ridge Real Estate

The sharp drop in China’s housing prices has led to an outburst of anger among property owners, leading to violent clashes in some cases, according to local media reports Tuesday.

In one case, scores of property owners surrounded a Shanghai sales office of Greentown China Holdings Ltd. 3900, +8.58% GTWCF, -33.19% to protest the developer’s 25% cut to prices within a five-day period, according to a report on the NetEase NTES, +1.62% news portal site 163.com.

Protesters held banners with slogans such as “You cheated us!” and “300,000 yuan [$48,750] worth of assets evaporate within five days — years of work in vain!” according to photographs of the demonstration posted on the site.

The report quoted a sales manager from Greentown as saying that the price-cut was aimed to boost sales and “cope with competition” from rival China Vanke Co. 2202, +1.48% the nation’s largest residential property developer.

In other Chinese cities, such confrontations between buyers and developers have turned violent.

In the eastern city of Jinan, banner-carrying owners blocked a street to protest another 25% price cut for a local housing development, this one conducted over the space of two weeks, according to the local-government-run Life Daily newspaper.

The protesters clashed with a group of counter-protestors suspected to have been hired by local developers, injuring some of the demonstrators and forcing the police to break up the fight, 163.com said in a separate report.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-falling-real-estate-prices-trigger-protests-clashes-2014-08-26

Good news for the housing market? | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Home Depot (HD) recorded strong second-quarter earnings on the same day the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported multifamily housing starts soaring. Per Forbes:

Home Depot reported $23.8 billion in second quarter revenue, a 5.7% increase over the year-ago quarter and a figure that cleared the $23.5 billion Wall Street consensus.
“In the second quarter, our spring seasonal business rebounded, and we saw strong performance in the core of the store and across all of our geographies,” Frank Blake, Home Depot chairman and CEO, said in a statement Tuesday morning.

And as a result, homebuilder stocks on the HW 30, HousingWire’s exclusive list of mortgage related stocks, were up on the news Tuesday.

How One Israeli Firm Thinks Architecture Can Make Peace | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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When Israel began building a wall along the West Bank in 2003—called the “separation fence” by some, the “Apartheid wall” by others—Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat and Karen Lee Bar-Sinai were about to graduate from architecture school at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. As aspiring architects studying and living “in the shadow of a territorial conflict,” as Greenfield-Gilat says, they were shocked to see that architects were involved in only the most superficial conversations about the aesthetics of the wall—there were no bigger-picture architectural discussions about how the wall would change its surroundings. “It was insulting that architects were not considered by themselves as people who have something to say about the most significant spatial fact that [was] being built in Israel,” Greenfield-Gilat says now.

Bar-Sinai and Greenfield-Gilat, now 36 and 37, believed architecture and architects had a place in the conversation about conflict resolution. For their Technion thesis project, they designed a transportation hub that, after a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement, could serve as both a border and a functional structure within Jerusalem, strengthening the city rather than fragmenting it. The project raised all kinds of big questions, as Greenfield-Gilat recalls: “How can we use architectural tools and insights in order to enhance…territorial peace agreements? How do you create a border within a city that does not really destroy the city?” And so, in 2006, they formed SAYA, a firm focused on “resolution planning,” or the idea that design and architecture can be tools for peace. The firm’s name is short for “Studio Aya,” in memory of Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai’s friend and fellow architect Aya Shapira.

Many of the firm’s current projects are thought-driven, paid for by think tanks, universities, or international agencies and governments. Most often, the architects come up with ideas based on needs they see in the world and pitch them to relevant organizations, though sometimes it’s the other way around. It’s prebuilding rather than rebuilding. The idea, as Bar-Sinai explained in a talk at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design last year, is to “be in the prime minister’s head,” to get policymakers to think, as much as possible, like architects.

15 states aggressively going after stop-foreclosure scams | Pound Ridge Realtor

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Last month, it was announced that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission were filing nine lawsuits against companies and individuals that collected more than $25 million in illegal advance fees with false promises to prevent foreclosures.

That was on a national level.

At the same time, 15 state Attorney General offices announced an additional 32 actions against foreclosure prevention scammers.

Often in these scams, the scammers offer delinquent homeowners security from mortgage servicers who are seeking to foreclose.

They promise the homeowners home retention, often take fees upfront and do little in return.

The homeowners often still face foreclosure, and receive none of the promised compensation.

Well, as HousingWire can now exclusively reveal, here are those 15 states that are aggressively going after these scammers.

The list was provided by the CFPB, and for the purpose of the list, we gathered some additional information.

15 states aggressively going after stop-foreclosure scams

Why mortgage rates haven’t risen as expected | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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By most estimates, mortgage rates were expected to climb this year, with rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage predicted to exceed 5%. Instead, rates are now lower than they were this time in 2013 — much to the advantage of mortgage shoppers.

There are a few reasons why higher rates never came to pass.

Rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.15% for the week ending July 10, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of conforming mortgage rates. A year ago, rates averaged 4.51%.

“In January, we were projecting at the end of the year that the 30-year would be 5.1%,” said Leonard Kiefer, deputy chief economist with Freddie Mac. “We most recently revised that down to 4.4%.

Supply and demand

Economists had largely expected rates to rise once the Federal Reserve indicated it would taper its purchase of mortgage-backed securities through its quantitative easing program, Kiefer said. Rates did, in fact, rise spike upward due to that indication last summer.

But when the Fed actually began purchasing fewer of these securities, mortgage rates began to fall. That’s because the tapering ended up coinciding with a reduction in mortgage originations — which means fewer mortgage-backed securities were being issued, Kiefer said.

Consolidation Creates Megalandlords Dominating Single Family Rentals | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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“Now we’ll sweep up everybody over the next two years who got stuck, who says I have home price appreciation, which they do. They bought right, but now they are stuck.”

The chief executive officer of the second largest hedge fund landlord articulated in an interview with Bloomberg why a handful of megalords are the process of dominating the single family rental business.

Rising value, soaring rents, atmospheric demand and difficulties finding new properties at below market prices are providing smaller players, includng small investors and “accidental” investors who rent out a property or two an ideal opportunity to cash in.

Consolication is underway across America. American Homes 4 Rent, the second-biggest REIT in the industry, this month bought Beazer Pre-Owned Rental Homes Inc., gaining more than 1,300 houses. Barrack’s Colony American has made four bulk purchases this year, reported Bloomberg in the story by John Gittelsohn and Heather Perlberg.

Another factor for consolidation is the challenge of managing hundreds, thousands of single family homes. Bigger may not always be better for single-family rental operators. Institutional funds that have internalized property management have to be able to maintain thousands of properties that were initially serviced by local and regional groups, said J.D. Asbell, a landlord with about 175 houses in Kansas and Missouri who also renovates and sells homes to Wall Street-backed firms, according to the Bloomberg piece.

“This is a hard business to run,” said Asbell, who has been renting homes since 1993. “The management is always going to be an issue for the big funds. That’s the key to this long term, keeping the houses occupied and getting out bad tenants that aren’t paying.”

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2014/07/consolidation-creates-megalandlords-dominating-single-family-rentals/

Mortgage Defaults Sink Below 1 Percent | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Mortgage default rates fell below one percent for the first time in years, providing further evidence that the foreclosure era is all but over.

Data through June 2014, released today by S&P Dow Jones Indices and Experian for the S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices, a comprehensive measure of changes in consumer credit defaults, showed decline in default rates. After eight consecutive months of rate declines, the first mortgage default rate fell to 0.89.

“Consumer credit default rates continue to drift lower and have reached a historical low,” says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee for S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Recent economic reports are encouraging with the unemployment rate now at a six year low and strong job creation in recent months. The continued declines in consumer default rates confirm other indicators of an improving economy. Credit standards for mortgage loans continue to be somewhat restrictive and may be contributing to low first mortgage default rates.

A Bronx Rite of Passage: Jump 110 Feet Into The Harlem River | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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C-Rock is a new documentary about a pastime that, for kids in the northwest Bronx, is “like a bar mitzvah.” Except that it entails jumping dozens of feet off of rocky cliffs into the Harlem River, where that waterway meets Spuyten Duyvil Creek. (It got its name because Columbia University athletes painted a big C on the rock face.) Fellow teens and Circle Line patrons bear witness to these daring dives, while older men—always men—reminisce about their plunges, which are virtually synonymous with adolescence. Director Jordan Roth spoke to Curbed about discovering the tradition, embedding himself with its practitioners, and what it was like to take the leap himself. Also, read on to find out how you can see the whole documentary.

Curbed NY: How did you first find out about this practice, both past and present?
Roth: The summer before we shot, I read a fantastic piece in the Times by Sam Dolnick about the tradition. I thought there must already be a doc about it because it immediately struck me as so cinematic. I researched more and was captivated by the whole thing.

It’s summertime fun, but people do get hurt >>

CNY: Explain the “levels” of cliff-jumping, to those who don’t know—the names of the different ledges, and all the rest.

Roth: There are jumping spots of varying heights along the cliff going from 25 feet up to about 110. The spots have names that are taken pretty seriously—some of them passed down from older generations. Also, some of the names are kinda dirty. Balls is at about 35 feet. (Editor’s note: you learn from the film that at that height, jumpers have to cover their, well, you know.)

CNY: What were a few of the most bizarre things you learned as you started to follow and interview the cliff-jumpers? Basically some highlights—bad, good, wild, whatever—of the production process.

Roth: What’s probably most surprising for people first learning about all this is that it is actually a tradition and that it does go back generations. But what I discovered while interviewing and following the guys was that everyone knows each other. I tapped into a network people of different ages and they all seemed connected by this place. That was amazing to me.

[Photo via Flickr/jag9889.]

There were so many highlights while shooting and discovering C-Rock. There were philosophies and strategies to jumping. There were anecdotes from earlier in the summer or from 40 years ago. Like, one kid in the late 60s landed badly and got a bruise all along the side of his body. He told his parents he was smacked with a broomstick. I heard a lot about the quality of the river water. It’s thankfully not bad now, but it was. Kids tried to avoid the “shit line” on the surface of the water.

There were also so many funny moments for us while shooting. The kids yelled ridiculous and terrible things to get each other to jump. Just them lounging on the rock, reminiscing, could also be hilarious. The rock face is sort of a summer afternoon home for them. Some guys leave shoes there, tucked away, because they prefer to jump in shoes. They’re like the Lost Boys, but with trash talk.

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/07/16/a_bronx_rite_of_passage_jump_110_feet_into_the_harlem_river.php

Zillow and Trulia continue to set records | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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With each passing month, the giants of online real estate continue to break records for web traffic. In June, both Trulia (TRLA) and Zillow (Z) set records for unique visitors.

That follows record-breaking traffic for both sites in May as well.

Zillow has increased its traffic in each of the last five months, topping out at just shy of 83 million in June. That eclipsed May’s total by 1.5 million visitors.

The site had a year-over-year increase of 49% from June 2013, when the site had 55.7 million visitors, to June 2014, when the site had 82.99 million visitors.

Trulia broke its own record in June as well. The site welcomed 54 million unique visitors in June, which is up 55% from June 2013. The company’s traffic was up 3 million from May 2014.

Trulia said that its rate of growth is increasing. “This was an acceleration from 42% growth in Q1 2014 compared to Q1 2013, and the 47% annual growth rate in May 2014 compared to May 2013,” the company said.

“Trulia’s marketing campaign continues to deliver strong results in attracting more transaction-ready consumers to our platform,” said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder of Trulia. “The marketing campaign, combined with our leading consumer products, are contributing to the acceleration of our audience growth amidst the busiest part of the home buying and selling season.”

Both sites’ increasing traffic has done wonders for their stock prices as well. Trulia’s stock is up 16.76% year-to-date and 23.38% from the same date last year.

Zillow and Trulia continue to set records

Here’s where Realtors expect home prices to grow the most | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Home price appreciation is slowing markedly, and a survey of members of the National Association of Realtors shows they generally expect home prices to increase in all states and the District of Columbia over the next 12 months, with most of the heavy growth in Florida, Texas, and California, among other states.

That’s the consensus from the May 2014 Realtors Confidence Index.

The median expected price increase is 4%.

Expected price movements depend on local conditions relating to housing demand and supply, demographics, and job growth, the survey says.

Click the map to enlarge.

The difficulty in accessing mortgage financing and modest expectations about overall economic and job prospects are factors underpinning the modest price expectation.

The expected price growth was highest (red) in states with low inventory levels, strong cash sales, and strong growth sectors (e.g., technology, oil).

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/30552-heres-where-realtors-expect-home-prices-to-grow-the-most

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Category Archives: Pound Ridge

China’s falling real-estate prices trigger protests, clashes | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Good news for the housing market? | Pound Ridge Real Estate

How One Israeli Firm Thinks Architecture Can Make Peace | Pound Ridge Real Estate

15 states aggressively going after stop-foreclosure scams | Pound Ridge Realtor

Why mortgage rates haven’t risen as expected | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Consolidation Creates Megalandlords Dominating Single Family Rentals | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Mortgage Defaults Sink Below 1 Percent | Pound Ridge Real Estate

A Bronx Rite of Passage: Jump 110 Feet Into The Harlem River | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Zillow and Trulia continue to set records | Pound Ridge Real Estate

Here’s where Realtors expect home prices to grow the most | Pound Ridge Real Estate