Category Archives: South Salem

HARP refinancings dip in second quarter | South Salem Real Estate

Higher mortgage rates caused refinance volumes to edge down in the second quarter as fewer homeowners filed refi applications.

When compared to the two prior periods, 2Q refinance volumes fell slightly, according to the latest housing agency refinance data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

In the second quarter, 279,933 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages refinanced through the government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), representing 22% of total refinance volume.

The slight drop in refi volumes occurred as mortgage rates rose sharply to 4.07% in June, up from 3.57% in March.

The total number of HARP refinances from the inception of the program to now totals 2.65 million.

Market analysts expect the trend to continue, as mortgage rates are likely to trend higher once the Federal Reserve begins scaling back its monetary stimulus.

“I think once rates begin their return to normalcy as the Fed starts to taper, refinance demand is likely to further decline,” explained Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) markets and international banking analyst Sarah Hu.

She added, “The tapering of refinance activity may have already occurred as evidenced in this week’s refinance index (< 2000), the lowest since Jan 2011.”

On a similar note, Compass Point Research & Trade analyst Kevin Barker noted that HARP refinance volumes will remain under pressure given the higher rates.

“If borrowers have less of incentive to refinance at higher levels, it’s going to effect volumes and how aggressively originators will target HARP borrowers,” Barker stated.

He continued, “I would point out that the drop in refi activity compared to HARP volumes will be relatively less because they’ll be more resilient to rates.”

Of the loans that refinanced through HARP in the second quarter, 19% had a loan-to-value ratio greater than 125%.

While taking a look at year-to-date figures through June, 18% of HARP refinances for underwater borrowers were for shorter-term 15- and 20-year mortgages, building equity faster than traditional 30-year mortgages.

In Nevada and Florida, markets that analysts have been keeping an eye on since the recovery began, HARP refinances represented 59% and 50% of total refinances, respectively. This is more than double the 21% of total refinances throughout the country over the same time period.

Underwater borrowers accounted for a large portion of HARP refinances in a number states, representing more than 61% of HARP volume in Nevada, Arizona and Florida.

From the program’s inception through June, 2.34 million loans refinanced through HARP were for primary residences, 78,756 were for second homes and 307,272 were tied to investment properties.

The Week In Video: Mobile Video, Bigfoot And Steam Powered YouTube | South Salem Realtor

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Welcome back to the ‘Week in Online Video’ where we catch up with the news and gossip from the world of YouTube, Cable, Google and all things video related. This week we take a look at how e-commerce annotations and the Content ID system are helping those who want to monetise their video content as well as some of the new tweaks YouTube have introduced.

YouTube Gives Go Ahead For E-Commerce Annotations

A huge percentage of those producing consistent, quality, relevant content on YouTube will have looked into the ways they can monetise their channel. There are many avenues to explore, all with various degrees of success depending on your approach and audience. We have a new kid on the block in the form of Subblime which aims to provide extra revenue for those that use their services. Subblime is one of the companies that YouTube have just endorsed that allow content creators to link out to third parties via their annotations. The company currently has around 40 creators signed up and confirms the CTR ranges from 20% to 50%. One to watch.

Great Moments in Mobile Video

Accessing video content via our smartphones seems as second nature as switching on the TV these days. But with the lightening fast pace of technology it’s easy to forget that the concept is only 10 years old and it’s only in the last couple of years that mobile video consumption has reached stratospheric heights. The team at Spark Qualcomm bring us the facts and figures.

See the full infographic here.

AdRev Opens Up Content ID Platform To Independent Musicians And Publishers

We’ve already touched on monetisation opportunities and the YouTube Content ID system has been an excellent way for artists to track down and often profit well from copyright infringements. AdRev, one of the biggest third party providers of tracking to the huge publishing companies such as Universal and Warner have opened up their features to smaller labels and musicians via their new ContentID.com site. Artists can upload their content to AdRev’s database for free and keep 80% of the revenue from unofficial, third party videos.

Rhett And Link Producer Jason Inman Wants $10,000 To Go Find Bigfoot

The producer behind YouTube darlings Rhett and Link has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a web series tracking and finding (because it totally exists) Bigfoot. For a modest $10,000, Jason Inman and his team of Squatch Watchers – with the help of the glorious Chuck Testa – aim to do what programmes like ‘Finding Bigfoot’ have failed to, albeit restricted to filming in the California area only. Of course, Sasquatch aficionados will know that Cali was the location for the most famous sighting of all time so anything is possible. Here’s the trailer for the campaign:

Protect your data from cloud-based storms | South Salem Realtor

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The recent crash of the dotloop e-signature platform highlights the challenges related to going paperless and relying on someone else’s server for your protection. Whether it’s your email, your website, your e-signature platform or anything else that you store in the cloud, what can you do to protect yourself from cloud-based storms?

In my recent series of articles on the differences between the various e-signature platforms, I outlined the dangers of using a PDF-based e-signature platform such as dotloop that relies exclusively on its company website to track document changes in the cloud. A dedicated web server is one of the basic requirements for any organization in today’s business world. It is used to host the websites of the company or the whole enterprise and possesses the requisite resources for the task. The bandwidth and storage space provided by a dedicated hosting server can never be matched by a shared server, and the exclusivity provided by this server is unparalleled. These servers are usually hack – proof, and are not targeted by malwares, viruses and spywares due to the heightened security provided by the web hosting company. Now that you have finally decided to go for a dedicated server hosting and selected one that suits your business’ demands, you have to think about managing it. You can either manage it yourself or give this task to the firm which is providing you with the server. It is always advisable to hand this task over to the dedicated web server company, which will deal with all the nuances involved in setting up, hosting and managing the server. Even though you can always learn how to manage it, the task will be arduous and take a lot of your time, which is precious for your business’ growth. Typically, Fully Managed Dedicated Server Hosting consists of server monitoring, software updates, reboots, security patches and operating system upgrades. This provides you with ample time to concentrate on other tasks while the hosting company handles your server managing demands. Also, the firms which hire the services of the dedicated web server are provided with individual server administration add-on tools in the standard deals. Therefore, you can be at ease with even the standard deals and see your business achieve new heights due to the fully managed hosting option. Most people choose shared hosting for their website at the beginning. Shared hosting is a hosting account on which you host your website on a shared server with hundreds of other people’s websites. Shared hosting is usually very affordable due to the number of websites sharing the space and resources on each server. The downside of this is your website has to share the resources on the server such as processing power and memory. This means if particular websites are very busy and getting loads of traffic, they will obviously draw more processing power and server memory. This can lead to your website being slow to open and your potential customer won’t wait for your website to display; they’ll just go elsewhere! The other drawback with sharing a server with so many websites is a server is only as reliable as the scripts being written to it. If a particular website uses a bad script it can take the whole server down. Your website will go down as well and through no fault of your own. If your online business is mission critical and you want to avoid suffering any downtime or slowness, your best option is your own dedicated server. And if you are not at all technical then the best option of all is a fully managed dedicated server.You can visit https://www.knownhost.com/managed-wordpress-hosting.html for more information.

A fully managed dedicated server is managed for you by your hosting provider. You won’t have full root access to it but you will get a control panel which you use to set up your website space and that’s it. So in a way, similar to a shared server, except it’s yours with only your websites using it. This used to be quite an expensive option but prices have come down and there are wide ranges of hosting providers who offer fully managed dedicated servers from as low as £50 or £60 a month. The other advantage of your own dedicated server is you can install any software you want. On a shared server you are only able to use the pre-installed software and components provided and this can be limiting. If it’s fully managed your hosting provider will install the software for you and they may make a small installation charge. You also get far more web space to use – if the hard drive on the server is 80GB then you can use about 74GB of that for your websites and software. And with a dedicated server you will get far more bandwidth to use than you would on a shared server. In fact, there are a number of hosting providers who now offer 1 terabyte of monthly bandwidth use which is more than enough for most online businesses.

When I was researching the articles, I posed the following question to dotloop’s CEO, Allison Austin: “What happens if your system goes down, is hacked, or if you go out of business?” His response cited dotloop’s multiple backup systems and that it would be highly unlikely that that would happen. At RadiusBridge we help your business manage internal and external data with a focus on the best use of data to grow your business.

When the dotloop system went down, its users lost access. All digital transaction management platforms send users their documents via email, where they can be archived and accessed for future use.

But unlike DocuSign, Instanet or zipLogix’s Digital Ink products that provide the double protection of both a PDF document trail and independent tracking of changes within the document itself, dotloop users had no backup unless they did one of three things prior to the outage: (1) printed the documents to paper beforehand; (2) downloaded the documents into a separate PDF file on their computer; or (3) stored the documents in another cloud-based solution.

It’s not if they will fail, it’s when Of course, whether you are Google, Amazon, Microsoft or any other technology provider, sooner or later the system goes down. On Aug.16, Google went down for a few minutes. The blackout was “unprecedented.” The result: a 40 percent decrease of global traffic on the Web, according to a CNET article.

Ugly Houses Boom as Foreclosures Dwindle | South Salem Real Estate

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While declining numbers of foreclosures are slowing down most investors, the leading homes-for-cash company is expanding into new territories.

HomeVestors, the number one buyer of houses in the U.S. opened 64 new franchises in the past three months, which is almost double the highest number of franchisees that have previously enrolled in a single quarter. “This number is remarkable and attests to continued strong interest in real estate investment and the opportunity for investors in today’s market,” said HomeVestors Co-President David Hicks.

Hicks said a lot of their growth is coming from properties in older neighborhoods where houses are 30 years older or more, not newer homes more typical of those that have dominated distress sale inventories.

“Our franchises are buying from homeowners who are selling for a variety of reasons. Hedge funds don’t have access to those homes and mom and pop investors want to buy in newer neighborhoods,” he said.

HomeVestors’ rapid growth comes amid the housing comeback. “The number of additional new franchisees during the second quarter of 2013 is an indication that investors increasingly believe what we know is true — that there is continued opportunity in the market,” said HomeVestors’ co-president, Ken Channell. “We are committed to our franchisees to help encourage continued growth and success this year.”

Among the new franchises HomeVestors have added are in new territory for the company such as Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Lower Hudson Valley, New York; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. HomeVestors of America, Inc. is also known as the “We Buy Ugly Houses” company.

Peter Eisenman’s Experimental ‘House VI’ Listed for $1.4M | South Salem Real Estate

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A rare house by “postfunctionalist” architect Peter Eisenman in the hills of Connecticut has been quietly listed for $1.4M. Despite the name, House VI, this was actually just the second structure built by Eisenman, who, at the time of the 1972 design, had spent much of his career on theory. Perhaps as a result, the construction of the compact house took three years and ran well over budget. In 1987, persistent issues with the structure meant it had to be thoroughly renovated, but the original clients remain satisfied with the result, so much so that they wrote a book in defense of Eisenman’s work. Set on six acres, the controversial house has been listed alongside a repurposed 1880s schoolhouse, now used as a guest cottage, and a lean-to barn

Mortgage modifications up, foreclosure starts down | South Salem Real Estate

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From April through June of this year, an estimated 204,000 homeowners received permanent loan modifications from mortgage servicers. Of those modifications, approximately 160,000 homeowners received proprietary loans modifications and 44,860 homeowners received loan modifications completed under the Home Affordable Modification Program.

“Our mission since 2007 remains the same – to reach out and assist as many homeowners as possible using all of the tools at our disposal. In addition to the progress made via our solution data, HOPE NOW sponsored over 140 face to face events in more than 70 markets nationwide and has been a driving force in bringing together all mortgage stakeholders in the interest of improving the nation’s housing market,” said Eric Selk, executive director of HOPE NOW.

The mortgage industry completed more than 6.52 million total permanent loan modifications for homeowners since 2007. More than 5.31 million of those loans were proprietary programs and 1,223,449 were completed via HAMP.

In the second quarter, approximately 81,000 short sales were recorded, bringing the total to more than 1.32 million since December 2009. When combining both loan modifications and short sales, the total number of permanent, non-foreclosure solutions was more than 7.84 million.

Second quarter numbers were at an estimated 329,000 foreclosure starts, compared to 472,000 during the previous quarter, a drop of more than 30%, and 527,000 in the second quarter of 2012, a decline of 38%.

Interestingly enough, completed foreclosures in the second quarter were approximately 158,000 compared to 162,000 for the first quarter, down 2%. In the second quarter of 2012, foreclosure sales were at 185,000, 15% above current numbers.

Short sale completions in the second quarter were an estimated 81,000 compared to 84,000 in the first quarter, a drop of 3%. Year-over-year, short sale completions were down 25% from 107,000 in the second quarter of 2012.

Month-over-month, foreclosure starts were estimated at 97,000 in June compared to 115,000 in May, down 16%. Foreclosure starts were estimated at 52,000 in June were down 8% from May’s 48,000. On a monthly basis, short sales completed dropped 7% from 28,000 in May to 26,000 in June.

Delinquencies of 60+ days remained unchanged in June at 2.22 million.

But numbers don’t tell the whole picture. It’s important to know why foreclosures are on the decline.

Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac, believes many markets have finally worked their way through the large batch of bad loans originated during the housing bubble years.

“On top of this, as home prices have now bottomed out in most markets, that is helping to lift all boats and allow some homeowners to avoid foreclosure through refinancing or even the sale of their home,” said Blomquist.

“Lastly, the persistent foreclosure prevention efforts over the past few years have waged a war of attrition on the foreclosure problem, helping to keep a lid on foreclosure activity,” he added.

Blomquist noted that regulations could be playing a key role in keeping foreclosures from going through. “In some cases, state legislation has slowed foreclosure activity quite dramatically — above and beyond the natural slowing of foreclosure activity that was already occurring,” he said.

Blomquist mentioned the example of California, where the Homeowners Bill of Rights that took effect in January, causing a 60% drop in foreclosure starts in a single month. “The still-unanswered question with regulations like this, however, is are they actually preventing foreclosures in the long-term or are they delaying them to next year or beyond?”

But the decline in foreclosures is a positive sign for the housing market. “Rising prices have helped some people regain equity, giving them an escape hatch to avoid foreclosure, and also giving them hope to keep making payments, rather than just walking away via a strategic default,” Blomquist said

12 Ways to Get More Pinterest Followers | South Salem Realtor

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Are wondering how to get more Pinterest followers?

Are you looking to increase your Pinterest engagement and drive traffic?

In this article, I’ll share 12 tips on how you can get more Pinterest followers and promote your business.

Why More Pinterest Followers?

More Pinterest followers can help you get more likes, repins, comments, clicks and impressions.

This can then help drive traffic, increase sales, generate leads and build your Pinterest brand.

It also provides an opportunity for you to generate more engagement with your customers.

Here are the tips:

#1: Add the Pinterest Follow Button

The Pinterest follow button diverts website visitors to your Pinterest page, thereby attracting followers. This can be effective if you have a high-traffic website.

Install the button in several prominent places on your website and blog—the header, footer, sidebar, etc. Make it easy for people to find your brand page and convert them into followers.

To create your button, use the widget builder page on Pinterest or create a custom button that matches your branding

Real estate agents get wise to superstitions | South Salem Homes

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Are you superstitious? What about your clients? While it may seem odd, honoring the cultural beliefs and superstitions that others hold not only builds connection, but it can also help you close more deals. A number of years ago I had some affluent clients from Thailand. We found a $1.3 million house in Santa Monica, Calif., that they wanted to purchase. Before writing the offer, however, they wanted their priest to look at the property. The “priest” turned out be a Buddhist monk who spoke no English and was dressed only in a scant orange robe and sandals. When my clients decided they wanted to stop for coffee, I was at a loss about what to do with the priest: Do I stay in the car, go in with my clients to buy coffee, bring him some bottled water or do nothing? I decided to wait in the car.

Needless to say, the whole situation seemed bizarre. When we arrived at the property, the monk walked it completely and then stood across from one of the trees in the front yard. An animated discussion followed in Thai between my clients and the monk. I learned later that the monk had advised them not to buy the property because there was an evil spirit in the tree in the front yard. My first question was how to get rid of the evil spirit. The monk had already advised my clients on that issue: It wasn’t possible. While this story may seem strange, have you ever bumped into any of the following with your clients? 1. In down markets, an agent who buries a statue of St. Joseph in the yard in order to sell the house more quickly?

http://www.inman.com/2013/08/15/real-estate-agents-get-wise-to-superstitions/#sthash.JIAv8gXy.dpuf

South Salem NY Weekly Real Estate Report | South Salem Homes

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South Salem NY Weekly Real Estate Report	8/21/2013
Homes for sale	85
Median Ask Price	$629,000.00
Low Price	$205,000.00
High Price	$12,200,000.00
Average Size	2863
Average Price/foot	$332.00
Average DOM	161
Average Ask Price	$995,112.00

Bidding Wars Abate as Markets Stabilize | South Salem Real Estate

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Competition for homes across the U.S. dropped from 68.6 percent in June to 63.3 percent in July. The number of offers facing competition peaked in March at 75.7 percent.

Increasing inventory, rapidly rising home prices and interest rate spikes all contribute to the continuing trend toward a less competitive market. Less measurable market forces such as buyer fatigue and buyers taking summer vacations probably also played a role in this trend.

Budding wars are abating as is in line with other research that points toward the strong sellers’ market beginning to shift toward more balance, giving frustrated home-buyers a bit of relief. Redfin agents report that buyers who have been in the market for even a few months have noticed the change in their favor, the Redfin brokerage reported today.

Redfin agents and analysts are closely monitoring bidding war rates, expecting them to continue their downward trend into the fall. This would be a contrast to last year’s pattern, which saw the market heat up in the autumn months.

The report’s key findings include:

As a result of reduced competition, winning offers fell closer to list prices for the second consecutive month. Nationally, the average difference between winning offers and list prices fell to 0.6 percent in July from 0.9 percent in June and 1.4 percent in May.
San Diego and Orange County saw the largest decreases in competition, with bidding war rates falling by more than 10 percentage points in July.
Washington, D.C.’s bidding war rate saw the smallest decline, falling just 1.2 points in July.
Baltimore was the only metro area where bidding wars increased, with an 8.8 percentage point jump in July.

The table below ranks the hottest real estate markets in order of competitiveness.

Buying Bedford Real Estate

Robert Paul Realtor buying Bedford real estate

Category Archives: South Salem

HARP refinancings dip in second quarter | South Salem Real Estate

The Week In Video: Mobile Video, Bigfoot And Steam Powered YouTube | South Salem Realtor

YouTube Gives Go Ahead For E-Commerce Annotations

Great Moments in Mobile Video

AdRev Opens Up Content ID Platform To Independent Musicians And Publishers

Rhett And Link Producer Jason Inman Wants $10,000 To Go Find Bigfoot

Protect your data from cloud-based storms | South Salem Realtor

Ugly Houses Boom as Foreclosures Dwindle | South Salem Real Estate

Peter Eisenman’s Experimental ‘House VI’ Listed for $1.4M | South Salem Real Estate

Mortgage modifications up, foreclosure starts down | South Salem Real Estate

12 Ways to Get More Pinterest Followers | South Salem Realtor

Why More Pinterest Followers?

#1: Add the Pinterest Follow Button

Real estate agents get wise to superstitions | South Salem Homes

South Salem NY Weekly Real Estate Report | South Salem Homes

Bidding Wars Abate as Markets Stabilize | South Salem Real Estate