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Home prices rise as market recovers | Bedford Corners NY Homes
Median home prices in Carroll County are on the rise, along with average monthly payments, according to a national survey on home affordability released Wednesday by RealtyTrac, the nation’s leading source on housing data.
These findings are among many recent indicators that show the local housing market is recovering from the 2008 crash that sent values plummeting and flooded the area with foreclosures, said the president of the West Metro Board of Realtors.
“Overall the market is getting a lot more stable and consistent,” said Dwayne Hicks, West Metro president and a broker with Metro West Realty. “If a home is priced right, it’s going to sell. With the values coming back up, current homeowners can move up to a larger house. We’re seeing solid signs of this, with more people putting their homes on the market and getting them sold.”
Hicks said most of the inventory of foreclosed homes that was keeping the market prices down has been sold. He said investors are bidding prices up on the remaining foreclosures left.
The median Carroll County home value at the end of 2013 was $96,267, up from $66,667 at the end of 2012, a 44 percent increase.
Along with the higher home prices, the average monthly payment rose from $288 at the end of 2012 to $458 at the end of 2013, a 59 percent increase.
During the same time period, the average Carroll County rental cost for a three-bedroom home rose slightly, from $1,158 to $1,187.
“Our rental market climbed a little, but it didn’t pick up as much as rentals in other parts of the country because we have a big rental market here with the university,” Hicks said.
http://www.times-georgian.com/article_42de3404-99e6-11e3-8194-0017a43b2370.html
Scandinavian-Influenced Manse on the Sound Asks $18.5M | Bedford Corners NY Real Estate
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Location: Fairfield, Conn. Price: $18,500,000 The Skinny: Taking his cues from “large scale Scandinavian residential architecture” and Dutch dairy barns, architect Jason Chai worked with famed interior designer Stephen Sills to create Sasco, a modern waterfront estate which has been the subject of an extraordinarily precious Architectural Digest cover story. The 17,000-square-foot home—which sits at the top of an immaculately landscaped, 600-foot lawn that stretches all the way to the shore of the Long Island Sound—features wood-plank siding and a distinctive gambrel roof clad in zinc shingles. Inside the home, Chai worked to break up the cavernous volume into livable, human-scaled rooms, but much of the credit for the interior’s organic feel has to go to Sills and his idiosyncratic design choices. The six-bedroom home doesn’t necessarily forgo grand spaces, but with the exception of the large sitting rooms, smaller, high-ceilinged rooms are the rule here. Built for a cousin of the architect in 2003, Sasco is now on the market for $18.5M, representing a $2.5M PriceChop from what it originally listed for in September.
http://curbed.com/archives/2014/02/19/scandinavian-influenced-manse-on-the-sound-asks-185m.php
Mortgage Rates around 4.33% this week | Bedford Corners NY Homes
Freddie Mac (OTCQB: FMCC) today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates up slightly for the second week in a row.
News Facts
- 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.33 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending February 20, 2014, up from last week when it averaged 4.28 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.56 percent.
- 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.35 percent with an average 0.7 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.33 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 2.77 percent.
- 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.08 percent this week with an average 0.5 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.05 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 2.64 percent.
- 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.57 percent this week with an average 0.3 point, up from last week when it averaged 2.55 percent. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.65 percent.
Average commitment rates should be reported along with average fees and points to reflect the total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage. Visit the following links for the Regional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.
Singapore Home Sales Post Slowest Start to the Year Since 2009 | Bedford Corners NY Real Estate
Singapore’s home sales slid inJanuary, marking the slowest start to the year since 2009, asdevelopers sold fewer projects after property curbs crimpeddemand.
Home sales declined 72 percent to 565 units last monthcompared with 2,028 in the same period a year ago, according todata from the Urban Redevelopment Authority released today. Thenumber of units sold was the lowest in the month of Januarysince 2009, when 108 were sold in that month, the data showed.
More from Bloomberg.com: Kerry Burnishes Green Badge in Asia as Volcano Disrupts Trip
“There were very few projects marketed last month asdevelopers with smaller projects stayed away from the market onweak buyer sentiment,” said Alan Cheong, a Singapore-baseddirector at Savills Plc. Home sales in the quarter could be aslow as 1,000 units, he said.
The government introduced loan measures in June as itwidened a campaign that started in 2009 to curb speculation inthe Southeast Asian city. Singapore’s property market isstabilizing and the country isn’t facing a credit bubble thatputs the island or its banking system at risk of a crisis, thecentral bank said on Jan. 15.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-home-sales-post-slowest-054340020.html
What $3,600/Month Can Rent You Around New York City | Bedford Corners NY Homes
Selling Your Home? Here Are 3 Tips to Minimize Capital Gains Taxes | Bedford Corners Real Estate
To put it lightly, home prices tanked during the financial crisis. The S&P Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index fell from from more than 200 to as low as 140, a decline of about 30 percent, and the 10-City index fell by about 33.4 percent. In a just a few years, home prices had lost pretty much every dollar of value they had added during a meteoric rise in the first half of the decade.
Odds are, if you own your home, the idea of a sale in recent years has been unattractive to you for exactly these reasons. The last thing you want to do during an economic recession or an anemic recovery is sell your home for a loss, so if they could, many people held on to their homes, hoping that prices and the market would recover.
The S&P Case-Shiller indexes haven’t yet recovered to their pre-crisis levels, but at 165.8 for the 20-City and 180.15 for the 10-City, they are each sitting at about 80 percent of their pre-crisis peaks. This is healing — if not outright health — in most major real estate markets, although at 79 percent of its pre-crisis peak, the national-level index is slightly weaker.
The time may be right to sell, and to hopefully sell at a gain instead of a loss. If this is the case, you can expect a fiscally weary Uncle Sam to reach out his hand and ask for a cut of the proceeds. Fortunately, there are a few provisions in the tax code that can help you pocket your profits and build your life wherever it is you move next. Click through to see a few tips to minimize capital gains taxes on the sale of your home.
Home Prices Rose in Fewer U.S. Markets in Fourth Quarter | Bedford Corners NY Homes
Prices for single-family homes rose in 73 percent of U.S. cities in the fourth quarter, fewer than in the previous three months, as surging values in the past two years started to reduce affordability.
The median transaction price for an existing home climbed from a year earlier in 119 of 164 metropolitan areas measured, the National Association of Realtors said in a report today. In the third quarter, 88 percent of markets had increases.
While tight inventories and improving employment are bolstering the housing recovery, home-price gains are poised to decelerate as an increase in mortgage rates from record lows cuts into affordability. Values have been rising faster than incomes, particularly in the West, the Realtors group said.
5 tips to help sell a home on Instagram | Bedford Corners NY Homes
There is a fair number of social media platforms out there, from Facebook to Twitter to Vine.
And perhaps one of the more overlooked resources — especially sad given its popularity among millenials — is the photo sharing website Instagram.
Instagram boasts more than 150 million users and is a simple way to capture and share photos on your phone.
As a millennial and part of the generation of future homeowners, Instagram is where I gravitate most.
Unlike other platforms, Instagram only hosts photos, and as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
However, the real estate industry still has yet to fully capture this audience.
Currently, if you search the hashtag Realtor, you only get 98,681 posts. And although others contain more results, this is still miniscule compared to words like vegan, which has almost 3 million pictures. If you want to see and learn from a group that has thrived on Instagram, look no further than the food community.
But with each platform comes its own rules of etiquette. So, here are five tips from an avid user on what not to do on Instgram and how to make your pictures captivate people, complete with stunning examples of the strategy being done right.
1. Make sure you are not in the photo.
The bathroom is notorious for this since it is hard not to capture yourself in the mirror, but it is still possible. While selfie was officially added to the dictionary, you are picturing the house, not you
http://www.housingwire.com/blogs/1-rewired/post/28917-tips-to-help-sell-a-home-on-instagram
Mortgage Delinquencies Now 1.5 Times Pre-Crisis Levels | Bedford Corners NY Homes
Black Knight, formerly LPS Financial Services, reports that 2013 marked the fourth consecutive year of significant, sustained improvement in the nation’s inventory of delinquent mortgages, and the second consecutive year of significant improvement for those in foreclosure. Delinquencies were just 1.5 times their pre-crisis average, with foreclosures down to 4.6 times their pre-crisis levels (declining from more than eight times the historical norm).
“In many ways, 2013 marked an abatement to crisis conditions in the U.S. mortgage market,” said Herb Blecher, senior vice president of Black Knight Financial Services’ Data & Analytics division. “Delinquencies neared pre-crisis levels, foreclosure inventory declined 30 percent over the year, new problem loan rates improved in both judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states, and foreclosure starts ended the year at the lowest level since April 2007. Despite a recent drop off, 2013 was also the best year for property sales since 2007, with totals through November outnumbering the full year totals for each of the prior three years. In addition, as we’ve noted before, due to stricter underwriting, 2013 originations have proven to be the best-performing loans on record.
“However, at the same time, higher interest rates and seasonality pushed monthly originations to the lowest level since 2008, and the current interest rate environment seems to have also brought an end to the refinancing wave we’ve observed for the last several years. In fact, refinance activity has remained low despite year-end declines in interest rates. With continued tapering anticipated by the market, opportunities for new originations will likely come from looser underwriting and/or home equity lending (which has shown a sizable increase in volume since last year).