Category Archives: Waccabuc NY

Mortgage rates barely budge from record lows | Waccabuc NY Homes

Leave a reply

After hitting record lows last week, mortgage rates have stayed tanked amid growing concerns that lawmakers won’t reach a compromise to avoid a “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take place next year, Freddie Mac said in releasing the results of its weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.32 percent with an average 0.8 point for the week ending Nov. 29, up from 3.31 percent last week but down from 4.00 percent a year ago. Last week’s rate was a new record in Freddie Mac records dating to 1971.

For 15-year fixed-rate loans, rates averaged 2.64 percent with an average 0.6 point, up from 2.63 percent last week but down from 3.30 percent a year ago. Last week’s rate was a record in records dating to 1991.

Rates on five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans averaged 2.72 percent with an average 0.6 point, down from 2.74 percent last week and 2.90 percent a year ago. Rates on five-year ARM loans hit a low in records dating to 2005 of 2.69 percent during the week ending July 19.

For one-year Treasury-indexed ARM loans, rates averaged 2.56 percent with an average 0.5 point, unchanged from last week but down from 2.78 percent a year ago. Rates on one-year ARM loans hit a low in records dating to 1984 of 2.55 percent during the week ending Nov. 15.

A separate survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association showed applications for purchase mortgages were up 3 percent during the week ending Nov. 23 compared to the week before. The survey, which included an adjustment for the Thanksgiving holiday, showed purchase loan demand up 8 percent from a year ago.

A Federal Reserve report published Wednesday summarizing commentary on current economic conditions around the country found markets for single-family homes improving in 10 of 12 Federal Reserve Districts. Boston and Philadelphia were the exceptions.

The “Beige Book” report — based on reports from Federal Reserve Bank and branch directors, and interviews with business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources — found sales growth generally slowed for both the condominium and single-family home markets in the Boston District.

Fed officials in the Philadelphia District said their sources noted that October “began as a disappointing month for some Realtors, only to be punctuated by Hurricane Sandy.”

Reports from the New York District were “mixed but generally firm prior to the storm. Selling prices were steady or rising.”

Declining or tight inventories were reported in Boston, New York, Richmond, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Dallas.

Single-family housing starts were up in the Cleveland District, while builders in the Richmond District reported “significant pent-up demand in the first-time buyer segment.

In the Atlanta District, existing home sales were up slightly compared to a year ago, with investors more active in Florida than in the rest of the District.

Residential construction of single- and multifamily homes increased at a slow but steady pace in the Chicago District, while reports from the Minneapolis District indicated that “segments of construction and real estate were growing at a double-digit clip.”

Real estate activity was characterized as “brisk” by the Kansas City District, with a solid rise in home sales reducing inventories.

The St. Louis District reported continued improvement in residential real estate market conditions.

In the Dallas District, single-family housing activity remained strong, with both new and existing home sales up.

Demand for homes continued to strengthen in the San Francisco District, and sustained growth in home sales has spurred new home construction.

via inman.com

Credit Conditions Continue to be Tight South Salem Real Estate

Leave a reply

Each month, the National Association of REALTORS® obtains up-to-date and on-the-ground incisive comments from REALTORS® who participate in the REALTORS® Confidence Index (RCI) survey. The RCI survey tracks expectations about overall market conditions, buyer/seller traffic, price, buyer profiles, and issues affecting real estate.

The selected comments reflect the general sentiment expressed by REALTORS® who participated in the October 2012, conducted during October 22 through November 5, 2012. All real estate is local and conditions in specific markets may vary from the national trend.

Tight Financing/Credit
REALTORS® reported that access to financing remains tight, so cash buyers, who are typically investors, are winning the bids against first-time homebuyers. There are reports that banks are asking for higher credit scores, with a report of a bank rejecting a score of as high as 800. It also appears that self-employment can be a problem in obtaining a mortgage. The mortgage application process continues to be deemed as too drawn out to the point of thwarting or jeopardizing the sale. There is also lack of assistance for helping current homeowners who are slightly delinquent to modify keep their homes.

  • “Banks are ignoring settlement dates and can’t even give you a reason for a delay. There is no accountability on their end of the transaction. Three settlements in October were delayed due to lender issues.”
  • “1st time buyers finding it difficult to qualify for loans”
  • “I had two buyers with over 800 credit score and the bank would not loan. They ended up paying cash and looking for a loan after the closing.”
  • “The lack of assistance from the mortgage companies for helping current home owners modifying their loan due to being underwater or slight delinquency to help them stay in their homes!!!!”
  • “Cash buyers are winning bids. FHA buyers hardly have a chance.”
  • “Concerned about purchases by investor groups – hundreds of homes purchased from Fannie/Freddie – basically no information forthcoming regarding this – concerned about what effect this will have long term in our area – are we going to have no “real” home owners for years to come? Not a good plan – list with realtors, to be purchased by home owner.”

Jed Smith, Managing Director, Quantitative Research

Jed Smith is Managing Director, Quantitative Research with the National Association of Realtors®. He has worked on real estate issues for the past 20 years, providing input on a variety of housing, commercial real estate, tax, and planning issues. Recently he has been involved in several international studies.

via economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org

4 Ways a Real Estate CRM Will Help You Get More Organized | Waccabuc Real Estate

Leave a reply

Thinking about investing in a customer relationship management (CRM) software? If you are, now is the time to get on board. Here’s why: the U.S. real estate market is finally making a comeback after years in decline. In fact, there are reports that U.S. housing rebounded to a four year high last month. There are less vacant homes on the market and applications for building permits are increasing

If you’re still a REALTOR®, you’ve lived through some tough times. Now is the time to prepare yourself for more business and make sure that you’re able to take it on while staying 100% organized and in-control.

In addition to helping you remain in touch with clients, nurture your leads, and build relationships with your sphere, a real estate CRM is absolutely instrumental to getting more organized. Below are four ways you can use your CRM to stay both proactive, organized, and in-control:

1.     Listing and Closing Activity Plans

A good real estate CRM will come with pre-designed listing and closing Activity Plans. These plans will help you manage every step in the process of listing and closing a home so nothing ever falls through the cracks.

2.     Transaction Management

Part of running a completely organized business is having the ability to manage all of your transactions, transaction documents, showings, and third parties in one place. And this is exactly what a top-notch CRM will let you do. Use your CRM to generate service reports, schedule appointment and task reminders, list property details, record closing and other dates, manage offers, and track commissions.

3.     Drip Email Marketing

Staying in touch with clients and prospects and building long-term relationships with them is the impetus that’ll spark referrals and repeat business. Your CRM should have a number of pre-designed marketing campaigns created you. Simply select the campaign that works best for a particular contact or group and your CRM will send emails out automatically at various time intervals. Drip email marketing campaigns will help you automate some of your marketing, which means that while you’re busy with a client on the road, you’re also marketing to hot leads and staying in touch with past clients at the same time.

4.     Integrated Calendar and Task List

Never underestimate the power of a calendar and task list in helping with personal organization. One of the benefits of a good CRM is that you don’t have to rely on your memory. Use the system for any reminders or notifications that you want to receive (for example, you may want the system to remind you to call your clients on their birthday or home purchase anniversary date). As soon as you log into your CRM, take a look at your calendar and tasks for the day so you’re aware of your appointments and what needs to be done.

Choose a system that automatically and wirelessly syncs with the built-in calendar in your smartphone. That’s an important plus because it gives you the opportunity to add and view appointments on the road and keep your CRM constantly up-to-date.

A good, easy to use CRM will play a big role in helping you run a more organized and productive business. As the real estate market is coming back to life, adopting a CRM into your business is more important now than ever.

via next.inman.com

4 steps to goal setting 2013: Uncover your best year yet! | South Salem Real Estate

Leave a reply

We love tools! We love technology! The best business strategies are inspired by both of these. But, implementing and applying new goals can sometimes be lost in the fast-moving pace of bright and shiny, and we can lose focus. As the old Robert Burns quote says “The best laid plans of mice and men go awry.”

So, for Week 3, of 10 Weeks and 10 Strategies, we will be using a classic business tool that provides 4 steps to quickly assessing where you should be setting your NEW goals of 2013. This will involve some critical thinking skills, so if you aren’t up for the challenge, you might want to move on.

Tips: Print the downloadable PDF to work on, or use this as a whiteboard brainstorming session:) This is meant to be a quick tool, don’t over analyze! 

The S.W.O.T. Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in your real estate business


The basics: In business we all have strengths and weaknesses, these are internal to your business. We also have threats and opportunities; these are the external factors. When you step back to answer what these are, you can uncover some amazing things about you and your business, that can help you prioritize and focus your efforts on the areas that will provide the most ROI for you, and your business. For example; should all your focus be on social media? What is having a bigger pay off; online activities or offline?

Build on what you do well; learn from what you don’t

Strengths:

  • What do you do better than your competition? (social media presence? better video marketing?)
  • What do your colleagues, team members, clients see as your strengths? (knowledge of the market? tech-savvy? great at using the phone?)
  • What is your best personal strength?
  • What factors help you get the listing, sell the home, or close the deal?

Weaknesses:

  • What could you improve?
  • What service could you add to stand out in your market? Be a paperless agent?
  • What should you delegate to someone else?
  • What should you avoid doing?
  • Is there something your competitors are doing better?

Is there a better way?

Opportunities:

  • Is there a trend with your buyers and sellers that you can act on? Lifestyle changes? Use of social media? Reviews and feedback websites?
  • Is there an area that you stand out in in your market that you can really become the expert in?
  • Is there an untapped resource you can utilize more? (relationships with local businesses? New networking possibilities?)

Be proactive, not reactive

Threats:

  • Is technology threatening your market position?
  • Are there more tech-savvy agents accomplishing more in year?
  • What are your obstacles to achieving your goals?
  • What is happening in the real estate industry? Nationally? Regionally?
  • How do these threats affect your strengths and opportunities?
It’s time to set some goals. Prioritize your goals based on what you’ve learned, and add them to your weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Set some milestones to have each goal implemented and break them down into implementable steps. You’ll have some built-up excitement and momentum going into 2013, and some awesome clarity! One app I love for finding new exercises for business strategizing is Mindtools.com

I’d love your thoughts and to know one goal you are implementing next year, leave us a comment! Did you miss Week 1 or Week 2? << There ya go! Until next week!

via next.inman.com

Choosing the right light bulb | Waccabuc NY Realtor

Leave a reply

In the world of home improvement products, it used to be that one of the things you could count on for consistency year after year was the light bulb. Little changed since its invention, so it was a product that you didn’t really have to give much thought to.

No longer. Today, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding this simple staple of the American household. Are 100-watt bulbs banned? Are those twisty bulbs dangerous? Can you use these new bulbs with a dimmer? Aren’t the new bulbs really expensive? There are lots of questions and lots of confusing answers, so let’s try to clear up what we can.

Incandescent bulbs

Incandescent bulbs are the traditional household light bulb. They consume electricity, which is measured in watts, and give off light, which is measured in lumens. However, most of the electricity they consume is actually given off as heat, so these bulbs have never been particularly energy efficient.

Incandescent bulbs haven’t technically been “banned.” What’s happened is that new energy efficiency standards have been put into place, which simply means that the bulbs now need to consume less electricity for same amount of lumens produced.

So the traditional 100-watt light bulb is, in essence, a thing of the past. It’s being replaced by a bulb that produces the same amount of light, but uses about 72 watts. Since that translates to money in your pocket in the form of energy savings, it’s not a bad thing. Similar wattage-to-lumen reductions are set to phase in for other bulbs over time, but given the ongoing mess in Washington, those dates are a congressional moving target.

Halogen bulbs

Halogen bulbs, also called energy-saving bulbs, are incandescent light bulbs that have a capsule inside that holds halogen gas around the filament, which increases the efficiency of the bulb. Halogen bulbs are a little more expensive to buy initially, but their energy efficiency increases by about 25 percent over a standard incandescent bulb, and they can last up to three times as long.

Another advantage to halogen bulbs is their color rendition, which is the ability of a light source to render the colors of an object similar to the way sunlight does. This makes them a great choice for many desk and task light applications. Halogen bulbs can also be used with dimmers.

Compact fluorescent bulbs

Compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs, are the increasingly familiar “curly tube” light bulb. Once again, they’re more expensive to purchase initially than a standard incandescent bulb, but their increasing popularity and availability is bringing prices down.

CFL bulbs uses about a quarter of the energy that a standard bulb uses to produce the same number of lumens, so that’s a pretty good savings. They’re estimated to last about 10 times as long, so that offsets the somewhat higher initial cost; in fact, the Department of Energy estimates that a typical CFL will pay for itself in less than nine months.

As CFLs have become more popular, they’ve become available in a range of colors that weren’t available when they were first introduced. You can now get CFLs with warm, yellow tones, as well as bulbs that are encased in an outer cover that help diffuse the light better — and which, coincidentally, also makes them look much more like a traditional light bulb. Some CFLs can also be used with a dimmer switch, but be sure that you verify that on the package when you buy it.

CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, as do all fluorescent bulbs. When they burn out, they shouldn’t be disposed of with the regular trash. Instead, they need to be properly recycled, which is something that a growing number of retailers are doing at no charge.

LED bulbs

The final type of bulb you want to be aware of is the light-emitting diode, or LED. These bulbs are semiconductors that convert electricity into light. They’re actually in the early stages of development at this point, so they’re still pretty expensive. However, many people think that these bulbs have a tremendous amount of potential, and represent the wave of the future in residential and commercial lighting. As such, their prices should begin coming down.

LED bulbs use only about 25 percent of the energy that a conventional bulb does, but their real advantage is in their life span. An LED bulb is estimated to last about 25 times longer than a conventional bulb, so even with the high initial cost, their use may still make good economic sense for applications where bulbs are difficult to access for replacement.

via inman.com

Atlanta Fed graphs show regional housing demand outstrips mortgage financing | South Salem Realtor

Leave a reply

Even though mortgage brokers and homebuilders report stronger home sales in the Southeast, mortgage financing remains short of demand in the region for October, according to senior analyst Whitney Mancuso of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

With the housing market in Southeast bumping along the bottom for a long time, the increase in sale gains and new home sales on a year-over-year basis indicates the market is turning positive. The lack of financing, however, does remain a headwind.

Click on the graph for October homes sales for builders and brokers compared to the previous year.

The availability of mortgage finance for homebuyers in the market was more than 50% short of demand, according to builders and brokers in the region.

Click on the graph to view accessibility of mortgage finance in the market.

Available credit also fell short of demand in regards to accessing finance for construction development. More than 80% of homebuilders perceived construction development challenging as a result of credit shortfall.

Click on the graph to view the construction development finance in the market.

Home inventories continue to decline from a year-over-year basis, with home prices increasing in October. This also indicates that home prices improved from last year.  As a result, homebuyer traffic is ahead of last year levels and is expected to rise throughout the rest of the year.

Click on the graph to view homebuyer traffic levels compared to a year ago.

The results posted are based on responses from 58 residential brokers and 25 homebuilders throughout the region, according to the Atlanta Fed’s SouthPoint blog.

via housingwire.com