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I thought they were my clients | Armonk Realtor
Susan was tempted to lock up and head for home like the rest of her colleagues. Floor duty was never thrilling, but the last few hours had been truly tortuous.
No calls, no walk-in traffic — just the lonely sound of the Muzak echoing through the empty office space.
If it weren’t for that darn goal setting class last month and the oh-so-close Cabo sweepstakes, she’d call it a day. But one more sale and she’d be the tanning beauty sipping Margaritas in February.
With renewed determination, Susan dialed another past client and practiced smiling into the phone.
“Hello?”
Susan nearly leapt out of her skin!
She hadn’t heard the door bell, yet a lovely (but very pale) couple stood in front of the reception desk.
The wife clutched a Homes & Land magazine in her well-manicured hands. Susan couldn’t help but admire her blood-red manicure, and those very muscular fingers with the princess-cut diamond rings (four!).
“Yes?” Susan stammered. “How can I help you two this afternoon?”
“Is it really afternoon?” said the wife, “We thought it was closer to evening.”
“But anyway,” interrupted the tall statuesque man, “it doesn’t matter what time it is. We’d like to see some property.” He gestured towards their Homes & Land magazine. “Do you have time?”
“Well,” Susan said, trying to contain her excitement. “I suppose there’s still enough light out. We could see a few.”
“Oh goody-goody!” said the wife, licking her lips. “I know exactly what I want!”
“Perfect!” said Susan. “That will make this go much more smoothly.”
“It certainly will,” agreed the man, winking.
Susan ignored the ill-feeling in the pit of her stomach, and focused on a sale. It was obvious these two had money: highlights without grow-out, impeccable suits, and the Mercedes in the parking lot. She reached for the magazine.
“We’ve marked the ones we like best,” said the woman.
A number of the listings were dog-eared and shredded. Photos of competing Realtors had their eyes blacked out or funny beards drawn over their pictures. Susan’s broker sported devil horns. She couldn’t help but giggle over that doodle.
“Let’s start with this house,” said Susan, pointing to the most expensive of their selections. “Can you follow me?”
“Why don’t we just hop in with you?” asked the man. “It’ll be so much easier that way, don’t you think?”
“I do!” agreed the wife.
“Uhm,” said Susan. It didn’t feel right. But she glanced outside and saw the light was fading. Soon they wouldn’t be able to see the curb appeal.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said.
Listing number one was a cavernous Gothic-revival.
“This is it!” said the wife, sweeping through the front doors.
“Just look at the size of the fireplace!” cried the man in excitement.
“We’ll take it!” they said together.
Susan beamed. THIS is exactly why floor duty paid off.
Back at the office, Susan put the final touches on the contract. Outside, trick-or-treaters ran through the parking lot on their way to the next neighborhood, yelling and throwing candy at one another. Usually, she’d be home handing out Tootsie Rolls to these same kids. But not tonight! Tonight, she was making money.
Certainly, she might not have worked so many hours into the evening if she’d known that the couple’s pre-approval letter was a year old. But that could be amended!
It wasn’t everyday a perfectly awesome couple wandered in off the street and bought a $1 million listing. For full price. And waving all inspections. Susan smiled.
“Last signature!” said Susan, pointing at the bottom of the contract.
“I’m so excited, I’m nearly spitting blood,” said the man.
“I know,” agreed his wife. “A deal this good, I can taste it.”
She signed her name with a flourish.
“I’m so glad you’re happy,” said Susan. “This is why I’m in real estate, you know. To make people happy!”
“You’ve pleased us enormously,” said the man. “And I’m sure you’ve pleased Christopher as well.”
“Is that your son?” asked Susan, clearing the table of paperwork.
“Oh, no,” said the woman with a cackle. “Christopher Beams! He works here, right?”
“Yes,” said Susan. “Why?”
“Well, he’s our agent! We’re under contract to buy a home off 38th, but we like this one much better. I’m sure he’ll agree,” said the man, loosening his tie.
Susan’s heart skipped a beat. “What? Another agent? Another contract? Another house? But, but, b-”
“But this is just how things go!” said the man.
“It’s real estate,” said the woman.
Susan held her chest. Her heart had begun to beat very, very fast. She put the paperwork down on the conference table and slowly backed away. Very slowly.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked the woman, licking her lips.
“Yes, where?” questioned the man, rising.
Susan ran for the door. Behind her she heard a POP, and the rush of flapping wings. Two large, black bats swooped in, pulling Susan’s hair and nipping her ears.
She screamed and pulled her cardigan over her head. This wasn’t how the night was supposed to end! She was going to Cabo! CABO!
She ran for the front door, screaming for help and throwing Junior Mints at the ravenous bats. Suddenly, the office went dark.
“Nooooo!” howled Susan.”Not me!”
Later, some passing trick-or-treaters said they thought they heard a haunting scream when the power went out — something to the effect of, “I thought they were my clients.”
But we’ll never know for sure.
via inman.com
Fed to Target Jobs and Housing Market | Armonk NY Real Estate
First, do no harm. That is at the top of the oath that every physician takes. But many pediatricians will prescribe antibiotics for a young child with a cold mainly to mollify the parents.
No matter that antibiotics can’t do anything for a viral infection. The parents want something, anything to be done to make their tot feel better (and let them get some sleep),so many pediatricians find themselves writing the scrip, which mainly was the path of least resistance.
Central bankers have followed the same position. The Federal Reserve Wednesday reaffirmed its plan to continue to pump liquidity in the financial system through securities purchases until the unemployment rate fell to levels considered normal. If normal is not the equivalent of 98.6 degrees farenheit, then it at least until the fever has broken.
There was a time when the Fed demurred that it could control much of anything, even money, which after all was something in its field of purview. After allegedly trying to target the growth of the money supply in the early 1980s, the Fed determined it couldn’t even define what constituted money in the then brave new world of money-market funds.
The Fed couldn’t manipulate things, as in the classic Al Hirschfeld illustration of “My Fair Lady” with George Bernard Shaw playing the puppeteer manipulating the character of Henry Higgins played by Rex Harrison, who in turn manipulated Eliza Doolittle played by Julie Andrews. So Paul Volcker, then the Fed chairman, gave up on targeting the money supply and sought to aim to keep inflation at bay.
As with pornography and the Supreme Court, the Fed may not have been able to define inflationary easy money, but it could recognize it. And a Princeton economics professor named Ben Bernanke put forth the proposition that, central banks may not know how to target so-called intermediate variables such as money supply with precision, they should get to the bottom line and target inflation. .
While inflation is everywhere and at all time a monetary phenomenon, as Milton Friedman taught, unemployment is the product of many economic forces. It is not simply the inverse of the price level, as the so-called Phillips Curve would posit. A little inflation won’t lower unemployment permanently as wages rise to meet higher prices and allow workers to catch up, leaving them on a proverbial treadmill.
Yet the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee Wednesday reaffirmed its policy to continue to purchase $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities from federal agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, continue to swap $45 billion of long-term Treasury securities for shorter-term holdings, and to keep its key short-term policy interest rate near zero through mid-2015, where it’s been since late 2008 in the depths of the financial crisis.
Somehow, three decades ago the Fed said the money supply was beyond its grasp; now it says it will target the unemployment rate. As if the decision to hire hinged on the cost or the availability of credit when businesses show little inclination to borrow. Cheap money can’t overcome the hurdles of uncertainties about taxes and regulations, which entrepreneurs readily say are their main concerns.
The Fed’s efforts are mainly evident in the housing market, not surprisingly since it is the sector the that caused the economy’s near-collapse and is the central bank’s focus as the most credit-sensitive part of the economy. Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported new-home sales rose again, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 389,000 units, some 27% higher than a year ago.
Housing will provide a positive for third-quarter gross domestic product growth, due to be reported Friday, instead of being a drain. Whether there is a durable recovery is open to question.
Housing analysts point to the backlog of foreclosures that finally is being cleared, which opens up the prospect of more home building, and with it jobs for builders and suppliers. And it can’t be denied the foreclosed properties being snapped up by investors and opportunistic home buyers invariably need fixing up, which has been a boon for the likes of Home Depot (ticker: HD) and Lowe’s (LOW.)
What’s not mentioned are the 10.2 million houses that are worth still less than the mortgages attached to them, according to Zillow.com’s reckoning at the end of the third quarter. While that’s down from over 11 million a year earlier, it still represents a lot of potential supply of homes that are likely to hit the market.
These are houses owned by Americans who did the right thing, meeting their mortgage obligations even though it economically disadvantageous. Moreover, they couldn’t sell their house without writing a check for the difference between the house’s price and the loan balance.
Higher property prices are closing that gap. While distressed sales are down, I see more homes up for sale now that market conditions have improved by owners who didn’t have to sell into a bear market. As any market technician will tell you, there can be overhead supply for sale once prices recover from a plunge. Amateur stock punters will wait until they get even to sell out; so it is with many homeowners.
For homeowners who got in near the top in the middle of the last decade, any chance to walk away will likely be taken. Remember, they had relatively little skin in the game given the tiny down payments required then.
Meanwhile, homeowners who bought years ago and are sitting on big profits and relatively limited mortgages — such as Baby Boomers looking to retire — may well see now as a propitious time, in traders’ parlance, to hit the bid (to accept the price offered by a prospective buyer.)
The Fed’s game plan appears to be to pump up the asset markets, both stocks and housing, in order to bring down unemployment. Whether that pays off remains to be seen.
New-home sales up 27 percent from a year ago | Armonk New Homes
Sales of new single-family homes were up 5.7 percent from August to September and 27.1 percent from a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 389,000 — the strongest pace of sales since April 2010, the Census Bureau reported today.
The picture varied widely by region, with new-home sales up 75 percent from a year ago in the Northeast, 62.1 percent in the West and 24.3 percent in the South, but falling 31.9 percent in the Midwest.
Nationwide, there were 145,000 new homes on the market at the end of September, which represented 4.5 months of supply at the current sales rate, down from a record 12.1 months in January 2009, Bill McBride noted on the blog Calculated Risk.
The median sales price of new homes sold in September 2012 was $242,400, up nearly 12 percent from a year ago.
Source: Calculated Risk blog.New homes include “not started,” “under construction” and “completed.”
At 38,000, the number of completed new homes for sale in September was the lowest level since the Census Bureau started tracking the stat in 1973, according to McBride.
Last week, the Census Bureau reported that housing starts increased 24.5 percent from September 2011 to September 2012.
via inman.com
6 Free Mobile Apps to Enhance Your Social Media Marketing | Armonk NY Realtor
Marshawn Lynch Buys Bay Area Mansion | Armonk Realtor
via zillow.com
How to Get Started with Social Media Marketing | Armonk NY Real Estate
Social media is changing everything. How we communicate, do business and read our news.
The biggest change to business is that it is democratizing marketing. Marketing is no longer monopolized by mass media, expensive printing firms or marketing agencies that controlled access to your customers and prospective audience.
You are now free to create and publish and market your own 30 second advertisement on YouTube and the world can watch.
Your brand now has its own TV channel
You can publish your own articles and educate your customers with posts created on your blog.
You “are” the publisher.
Then you can engage, distribute and market to your customers and prospects on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
You now “own” your marketing distribution platforms and they are called social networks.
You can gain control over your marketing. It is the end of business as usual.
The Challenges
We as humans are slow to change but technology is changing rapidly with the pace accelerating. Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users while Facebook added 200 million users in less than 12 months.
CEO’s and management are struggling to cope with the pace of the shift. This is also a cultural challenge.
We think that we are competing with a store across the street or in the same suburb but modern logistics, online stores and the social web are creating competitors in Canada, Korea and Hong Kong and across the globe.
Getting noticed in a daily torrent of over 1.5 billion new pieces of content , more than 200 million tweets and 1.5 million new YouTube videos is like being a grain of sand on the beach. It is hard to stand out.
Online business and appearing high in Google search results is often touted as easy as printing your own money if you believe the spammers and scammers. The reality is much different but there are ways to move your brand and business from invisible to visible.
The Solutions
Many businesses still have not noticed the tsunami wave of change as we move to a digital world. From a distance it looks like a ripple on the ocean. That wave will soon reek havoc unless you have planned for its arrival.
So we need to embrace the world of an increasingly digital and social web. The solutions and answers are increasingly found online.
Accept the fact that most people will find you or your business on a Google search, an email from a colleague or a friend telling you on Facebook.
Social networks and social media are the game changers.
Why Use Social Media Marketing?
The real power of social media marketing lies in its amplification of your message as it is shared on an exponential and low friction web but there are some other reasons why you should step into the social media game.
- It accelerates the speed of your brand message and story. Tweets can be sent in a second while publishing a brochure takes weeks.
- It is networking on steroids (It takes you beyond the Dunbar limitation of 150 connections on a global scale and empowers weak ties)
- It makes self publishing easy and intuitive
- It enlists the power of “World of Mouth”
- It facilitates trust
Any one of these on their own are reason to throw your marketing chips on the table.
Core Social Media Marketing Principles
Social media marketing is not a one way conversation, pushing your product or corporate speak.
It is about creating content that engages and builds online tribes that crowd source your marketing and online conversations.
There are also some core principles in building a long lasting social media marketing foundation that will survive a Facebook meltdown.
- Create “Liquid” (Content that flows and is easily shared) and “Linked” (content that is linked to your core brand values) content
- Publish to multiple social networks with your core content residing on your website and blog.
- Create compelling “Multi-Media Content (not everyone wants to read a 400 word article but would view that same content on YouTube or Slideshare)
- Embrace visual communication marketing with images and videos published on Facebook, Google+. Pinterest or Instagram
- Make it easy to share with sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+
This will provide the bedrock of compelling contagious content that will be shared and will bring your customers and prospects back for more. These digital assets will be indexed by Google and other search engines that will provide enduring and long lasting benefits.
The Two Step Social Media Marketing Program
Social media marketing is not a one trick pony and approaching with the singular tactic of just publishing a Facebook Page is a risky approach and will not produce any substantial benefit.
Firstly create a social media marketing strategy that defines your audience and marketing goals
Secondly implement tactics on multiple social media channels that set out to deliver on achieving results congruent with that strategy.
You only need to look at the approach taken by the Old Spice brand which was one of the best integrated social media marketing campaigns in recent memory to realize what power a multi-channel and multi-media social media marketing strategy can bring to the table.
Some tips and tactics for social media marketing.
- Blog – Create a home base for your content that you own
- Facebook – include visual content when publishing to your timeline and use it to build engagement with your fans
- Twitter – Learn the art of the headline as you only have 140 characters to tweet (including the link)
- YouTube – Create short videos (2 minutes was the norm but Old Spice videos moved the gateposts and 15-25 seconds is much more common
- LinkedIn – Embrace the power of “Groups” on LinkedIn to position you as an expert and thought leader
- Slideshare – Make your PowerPoints a visual marketing medium that people will download share and embed
- Pinterest – Create boards that suit your business product categories and have some visual sharing fun
- Instagram – Make it personal and humanize your brand as social media is about being human
Just one tip to finish. Keep giving away free content till it hurts!
Be Patient
Social media marketing is not a quick fix but needs to be built on the premise that a long term approach will build an online brand asset that keeps on giving long after your first tweet or YouTube video is published.
You will need to persist and continue to publish and build tribes and keep them nourished with content that educates, informs, entertains and inspires.
It is like building a home “one brick at a time”
Want to Learn How to Market Your Business and Brand on Social Networks?
My book – Blogging the Smart Way “How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.
It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.
I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 115,000.
You can download and read it now.
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via jeffbullas.com
How to Block Politcal Yarn and Herd Facebook Rants | Armonk NY Real Estate
via dreamgrow.com
Seth’s Blog: The no-problem problem | Armonk NY Real Estate
An organization that’s run on emergencies and reaction to incoming doesn’t know what to do when there are no problems.
Instead of seeking out new ways to delight, they run around looking for new emergencies, and if they look hard enough, of course they’ll find them.
(Two reasons for this: emergencies concentrate the mind and allow things to get done, and history).
Armonk Realtor | Housing starts increase by 15%
The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reports privately owned housing starts increased 15% since August from an annual rate of 758,000 to 872,000 homes.
That is 34.8% above last year’s rate of 647,000. The single-family housing starts in September climbed 11% at a rate of 603,000 from August where it was at 543,000. The September rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 206,000.
Authorized building permits for privately owned housing grew 11.6% in September at annual rate of 894,000 from August’s annual rate of 801,000, and is a 45.1% increase from last year.
Single-family authorizations in September grew 6.7% in September at a rate of 545,000 from August’s rate of 511,000. Authorizations of units in building with five or more were at a rate of 323,00 in September.
The 15% increase in housing starts is a great thing, because this means that the household formation rates have grown. In 2011, they doubled for a positive housing demand, which means consumers are purchasing more property rather than renting.
Existing home and new home sales are also increasing at a 10% year-over-year rate, which mean demand is significantly higher, and mortgage rates are at an all time low. Since consumers are purchasing properties more now, the existing home inventory is down 20% year-over-year and at six months supply, which is back to normal for a good, healthy market.
Specifically, new home construction will make a fill comeback once the job market rebounds. With these current trends that we are seeing now, analysts expect a slow, but positive improvement in both markets.
via housingwire.com