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Bedford Corners NY

Don Knotts’ former Glendale home is listed for $1.295 million | Bedford Corners Homes

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The former home of Don Knotts in Glendale is for sale at $1.295 million.

The Colonial Revival house, built in 1934, has been restored and updated. Features include a foyer that steps down to the living room, wood-beam ceilings, a decorative fireplace, coffered ceilings in the dining room, a breakfast room, a den, three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a three-quarter bath, a powder room and 3,213 square feet of living space.

Knotts, who died in 2006 at 81, was known for his role as bumbling Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife in “The Andy Griffith Show” during the ’60s, about the same time he owned the house. He won five Emmys for his supporting role in the sitcom. Among his scores of film and TV credits, he joined the cast of “Three’s Company” in 1979 for a five-year stint as landlord Ralph Furley.

The sellers paid $600,000 for the property in 2003, public records show.

Troy Gregory of Sotheby’s International Realty is the listing agent.

via latimes.com

Citibank recruiting mortgage loan originators | Bedford Corners Realtor

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1/14/13 3:15pm

Citibank ($42.22 0%) is looking to expand its retail group partnership channel, which includes alliances with other companies and real estate agencies.

The company is looking for sales managers and loan originators.

Citibank is searching for staff in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Montana, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas, Wisconsin, Alabama, Minnesota, Kentucky, Michigan and Illinois.

At this time, Citibank does not know exactly how many independent loan brokers it will be hiring.

via housingwire.com

Bedford Corners Realtor | Old style septic system regulations are due for modernization

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It hasn’t been that many years since the Maryland Department of Natural Resources filled in the communal outhouse style comfort station that graced the western side of Stafford Road. Heck, private privies remain in use in remote camping and park areas throughout the country, though increasingly they’re being phased out.

There’s a reason for the demise of night soil production stations, back yard garbage dumps and bans on burning trash and yard waste: There are just too many people and, if everyone decided to use the disposal methods that prevailed well into the mid 1900s, the smell would be oppressive, and the effect on ground water would be sickening.

Something that is likely to go the way of outhouses is the standby version of the residential septic system that has been in use and largely unchanged at least since the 1950s. State-of-the-art technology for its day, a septic system is something of a recycling wonder. It consists of a settling tank where solids flushed from a home sink out of the water that carried them there. Water exits the system through a drain field into the nearby soil. If everything is working properly and the system isn’t overloaded, the water ends up being cleansed by the action of bacteria and other natural forces.

Starting Jan. 1, new, more strict, regulations regarding septic systems for new houses built away from access to public sewer systems will go into effect, and the regulations promise to add $11,000 to $14,000 to the cost of a new home built on a well and septic system in Harford County. The new state law demands septic systems for new homes be built using the “best available technology,” or BAT.

From a certain perspective, it’s hard to see why the buyers of new homes on septic systems wouldn’t be demanding the best available technology when it comes to waste disposal. As a rule – and there are exceptions – homes served by septic systems also draw their water from wells. While theoretically, there’s not supposed to be any crossover between the two systems, in practice, sometimes well and septic fields overlap.

Reality being what it is, however, questions about septic system technology take a back seat to square footage, storage space and curb appeal when people are buying houses, so often the most inexpensive available technology allowed by law is what ends up being used. No change in law, means no change in industry standard.

Is a change in the industry standard called for? Probably so. While septic systems have proven to be largely reliable, they have their problems, and a failed or marginal septic system has the potential to pollute nearby groundwater and springs with excess nutrients, which often manifest themselves as bright green algae blooms in standing water and nearby creeks.

via articles.baltimoresun.com

Long Island Power Should Be Private, New York Panel Says | Bedford Corners Homes

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The Long Island Power Authority should be converted into an investor-owned utility to end poor management practices that exacerbated slow and halting repairs of blackouts from October’s Hurricane Sandy, a New York state investigative panel said today.

Privatization would make management of the state-owned electrical system answerable to the New York Public Service Commission, which should be empowered by the legislature with stronger sanctions including the ability to revoke a utility franchise, the panel told Governor Andrew Cuomo today in a preliminary briefing.

Cuomo, a Democrat, convened the so-called Moreland Commission in November with the power to subpoena witnesses, after more than two million homes and businesses lost electricity from the storm, some for as long as 21 days. Some of the panel’s recommendations will need legislation and Cuomo said he’s waiting for its final report. No date was given for its release.

“The key to problems at LIPA was a fundamentally dysfunctional management structure,” Benjamin Lawsky, the commission co-chairman and superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, said at a meeting in Albany that was broadcast on the Internet. “The commission found that the only solution is for fundamental change at LIPA and how power is delivered on Long Island.”

Outsourced Operations

The state-controlled authority owns Long Island’s electrical lines and contracted with National Grid Plc (NG/) to operate them. Under such divided and “dysfunctional” management, LIPA let consultants, rather than the utility operator, guide its spending and failed to properly replace aging poles or trim away overhanging trees as recommended in state studies, Lawsky said.

Bringing day to day operations into LIPA may not improve management and would add 2,000 employees to the state pension system, Lawsky said.

LIPA was formed in 1985 by state lawmakers because of a “lack of confidence” in Long Island Lighting Co.’s ability to supply power reliably and economically after its investment in the ill-fated Shoreham nuclear plant. Shoreham, the most expensive U.S. nuclear power project, never operated commercially after the state raised questions about the ability to evacuate Long Island in the event of a radioactive release.

LIPA bought the lighting company’s remaining assets in 1998, including its power lines and power plants.

The authority has about $7 billion in debt and $4 billion of assets, Lawsky said.

New Contract

National Grid operates, maintains and repairs LIPA’s power lines through Dec. 31, 2013. The authority picked in 2011 Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PEG), owner of New Jersey’s largest utility, to take over the contract in 2014. The management structure is unique to LIPA.

Public Service is preparing to manage LIPA’s lines and intends to work with Cuomo and legislators as needed, Karen Johnson, a spokeswoman, said today in an e-mail.

LIPA is “reviewing the report and will continue to cooperate with the state and the Moreland Commission to do what is in the best interest of Long Island’s ratepayers,” Mark Gross, an authority spokesman, said in an e-mail.

The New York Public Service Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities, needs the authority to impose stronger sanctions to compel better performance, said Robert Abrams, the other commission co-chairman and a former state attorney general.

Maximum Penalty

The maximum penalty for violating the commission’s orders is $100,000 a day, Abrams said. A more effective sanction would be 0.02 percent of gross revenue, or about $2 million a day for Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED), the state’s largest utility owner, he said.

Storm response plans should be subject to commission approval and compliance enforced by more staff, Abrams said.

“Superstorm Sandy devastated our region,” Chris Olert, a Con Edison spokesman, said in an e-mail. “All of us must participate in the discussions on infrastructure investments and new policies.”

Higher Costs

An October 2011 strategic review of LIPA by the Brattle Group concluded that privatization may raise costs by $438 million a year because an investor-owned utility can’t issue tax-exempt bonds. Cost of capital for the privatized utility would be 10.73 percent compared to LIPA’s current cost of capital of about 5 percent, it concluded.

A 10-year LIPA bond backed by bill payments traded Dec. 31 with an average yield of 2.27 percent, 0.58 percentage point above an index of benchmark municipals with similar maturity, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That yield difference has narrowed from when the bonds first priced in June with a spread of 0.81 percentage point.

Privatizing the Long Island authority “is just not realistic and practical,” said Matthew Cordaro, a former chief operating officer of Long Island Lighting. Refinancing LIPA’s tax-exempt bonds would raise power rates that are already among the highest in the country, he said today in a telephone interview.

Converting the authority into a full-service municipal utility that employs professional managers is a better option, he said.

via bloomberg.com

A Closer Look At The Fiscal Cliff Deal’s Impact On The Built-In-Gains Recognition Period For S Corporations | Bedford Corners NY Homes

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Last week, in a post titled “Secrets of the Fiscal Cliff,” I set about identifying six of the lesser publicized tax aspects of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA). In the final item, I wrote the following:

Ask a C corporation shareholder why he hasn’t converted to an S corporation, and the most common response is “the built-in-gains tax.” As a reminder, the built-in-gains tax prevents a C corporation from circumventing double taxation by converting to an S corporation and then immediately selling its assets or liquidating. In simple terms, it does so by requiring an S corporation to pay corporate level tax on any gains that were inherent in the assets of the S corporation on the date of the election and that are recognized within the first 10 years after the S election is effective.

Recent law changes, however, have provided for truncated recognition periods for existing S corporation that have reached certain landmarks in their 10-year period. For example, the 2009 Recovery Act provided that for S corporation tax years beginning in 2009 and 2010, no tax would be imposed on the net unrecognized built-in gain of an S corporation if the seventh tax year in the recognition period preceded the 2009 and 2010 tax years.

Note, however, that these law changes merely abbreviated the recognition period for certain existing S corporations that have already begun their recognition periods. For newly electing S corporations, the recognition period has always remained 10 years. Until now. The fiscal cliff deal surprisingly calls for only a 5-year recognition period for corporations that elect S status in 2012 or 2013.

I reached this conclusion based on the language of Section 326 of the ATRA, which reads:

EXTENSION OF REDUCTION IN S-CORPORATION RECOGNITION PERIOD FOR BUILT-IN GAINS TAX.

IN GENERAL.—Paragraph (7) of section 1374(d) is amended by inserting after subparagraph (B) the following new subparagraph:

(C) SPECIAL RULE FOR 2012 AND 2013.—For purposes of determining the net recognized built-in gain for taxable years beginning in 2012 or 2013, subparagraphs (A) and (D) shall be applied by substituting ‘5-year’ for ‘10-year’.’’

For a point of reference, pre-ATRA  Section 1374(d)(7)(A) read:

(7) Recognition period.

(A) In general. The term “recognition period” means the 10-year period beginning with the 1st day of the 1st taxable year for which the corporation was an S corporation.

Putting it all together, I concluded that Section 326 of the ATRA provided a different type of relief from previous amendments to Section 1374. The fiscal cliff deal, it appeared to me, was abbreviating the typical 10-year recognition period for newly electing S corporations in 2012 and 2013 on a prospective basis. Why did I reach this conclusion, particularly in light of the fact that previous amendments to the recognition period had all been made on a retroactive basis?

For starters, the previous changes to Section 1374(d)(7) used very specific language to indicate the effect of a truncated recognition period. Consider Section 1374(d)(7)(B), which was added in 2009:

(B) Special rules for 2009, 2010, and 2011. No tax shall be imposed on the net recognized built-in gain of an S corporation—

(i) in the case of any taxable year beginning in 2009 or 2010, if the 7th taxable year in the recognition period preceded such taxable year, or

(ii) in the case of any taxable year beginning in 2011, if the 5th year in the recognition period preceded such taxable year.

Looking at it logically, I assumed that if Congress intended Section 326 of the ATRA to simply exclude from built-in-gains any gain recognized in 2012 or 2013 by an S corporation that had reached the five-year point in its recognition period, it would have written the proposed Section 1374(d)(7)(C) in the same manner as Section 1374(d)(7)(B). More to the point, Congress could have avoided adding a new subparagraph and simply amended Section 1374(d)(7)(B)(ii) by adding 2012 and 2013.

Adding a differently worded new subparagraph didn’t make sense, which is why I concluded that the language of new Section 1374(d)(7)(C) was meant to accomplish something else: to shorten the recognition period to five years for corporations electing S status in 2012 or 2013.

But over the weekend, something gave me pause, and it wasn’t just the fact that such an approach would be a departure from previous Congressional motives; it was the language of the title to Section 326 of the ATRA. As indicated above, it reads:

EXTENSION OF REDUCTION IN S-CORPORATION RECOGNITION PERIOD FOR BUILT-IN GAINS TAX.

via forbes.com

Accenture exec: Foreclosure update shows short-sale stigma is gone | Bedford Corners NY Real Estate

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A senior residential mortgage and tech executive with Accenture believes one of the major trends that emerged in 2012 is the banks’ willingness to conduct more short sales while continuing to pursue other loss mitigation efforts.

Ghazale Johnson, a senior executive with Accenture Credit Services, specializes in both residential mortgages and technology.

Johnson says servicers have “really embraced the short-sale concept,” and other loss mitigation tools.

What prompted the change, she says, is a recognition by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2012 that short-sales could be encouraged by simply making the process easier. Some of the 2012 short-sale changes included the removal of limitations associated with private mortgage insurance and pushback from second-lien holders.

The result, Johnson notes, was a greater willingness among servicers and lenders to push forward with short sales.

Johnson responded to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s report of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac foreclosure prevention actions rising 4% from the second quarter to the third quarter, calling it “encouraging” and a “win-win for servicers, investors and borrowers.”

Earlier on, she notes “complexities” affiliated with the short sale process made it a less likely method of limiting losses just a short few years ago.

“Lenders and buyers were stepping away,” she says, and the stigma of short-sales being too difficult to do took time to remove.

However, 2012 freed up the process, leading to positive gains in the amount of work-outs and short-sales executed.

As for what 2013 brings, Johnson says servicers had two years to focus on scaling their operations while also focusing on the development of their internal systems. Those changes were made in the wake of the crisis to respond to an influx of foreclosures.

With the hardest part over, she expects servicers to refocus on developing a long-term operating model for servicing loans. She sees a focus that will likely search for “cost-effective” and “strategic operating” models.

via housingwire.com

The fiscal cliff deal: America’s European moment | Bedford Corners Realtor

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FOR the past three years America’s leaders have looked on Europe’s management of the euro crisis with barely disguised contempt. In the White House and on Capitol Hill there has been incredulity that Europe’s politicians could be so incompetent at handling an economic problem; so addicted to last-minute, short-term fixes; and so incapable of agreeing on a long-term strategy for the single currency.

Those criticisms were all valid, but now those who made them should take the planks from their own eyes. America’s economy may not be in as bad a state as Europe’s, but the failures of its politicians—epitomised by this week’s 11th-hour deal to avoid the calamity of the “fiscal cliff”—suggest that Washington’s pattern of dysfunction is disturbingly similar to the euro zone’s in three depressing ways.

Can-kicking is a transatlantic sport

The first is an inability to get beyond patching up. The euro crisis deepened because Europe’s politicians serially failed to solve the single currency’s structural weaknesses, resorting instead to a succession of temporary fixes, usually negotiated well after midnight. America’s problems are different. Rather than facing an imminent debt crisis, as many European countries do, it needs to deal with the huge long-term gap between tax revenue and spending promises, particularly on health care, while not squeezing the economy too much in the short term. But its politicians now show themselves similarly addicted to kicking the can down the road at the last minute.

This week’s agreement, hammered out between Republican senators and the White House on New Year’s Eve, passed by the Senate in the early hours of New Year’s Day and by the House of Representatives later the same day, averted the spectre of recession. It eliminated most of the sweeping tax increases that were otherwise due to take effect from January 1st, except for those on the very wealthy, and temporarily put off all the threatened spending cuts (see article). Like many of Europe’s crisis summits, that staved off complete disaster: rather than squeezing 5% out of the economy (as the fiscal cliff implied) there will now be a more manageable fiscal squeeze of just over 1% of GDP in 2013. Markets rallied in relief.

But for how long? The automatic spending cuts have merely been postponed for two months, by which time Congress must also vote to increase the country’s debt ceiling if the Treasury is to be able to go on paying its bills. So more budgetary brinkmanship will be on display in the coming weeks.

And the temporary fix ignored America’s underlying fiscal problems. It did nothing to control the unsustainable path of “entitlement” spending on pensions and health care (the latter is on track to double as a share of GDP over the next 25 years); nothing to rationalise America’s hideously complex and distorting tax code, which includes more than $1 trillion of deductions; and virtually nothing to close America’s big structural budget deficit. (Putting up tax rates at the very top simply does not raise much money.) Viewed through anything other than a two-month prism, it was an abject failure. The final deal raised less tax revenue than John Boehner, the Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, once offered during the negotiations, and it included none of the entitlement reforms that President Barack Obama was once prepared to contemplate.

The reason behind this lamentable outcome is the outsize influence of narrow interest groups—which marks a second, unhappy parallel with Europe. The inability of Europeans to rise above petty national concerns, whether over who pays for bail-outs or who controls bank supervision, has prevented them from making the big compromises necessary to secure the single currency’s future. America’s Democrats and Republicans have proved similarly incapable of reaching a grand bargain; both are far too driven by their parties’ extremists and too focused on winning concessions from the other side to work steadily together to secure the country’s fiscal future.

The third parallel is that politicians have failed to be honest with voters. Just as Chancellor Angela Merkel and President François Hollande have avoided coming clean to the Germans and the French about what it will take to save the single currency, so neither Mr Obama nor the Republican leaders have been brave enough to tell Americans what it will really take to fix the fiscal mess. Democrats pretend that no changes are necessary to Medicare (health care for the elderly) or Social Security (pensions). Republican solutions always involve unspecified spending cuts, and they regard any tax rise as socialism. Each side prefers to denounce the other, reinforcing the very polarisation that is preventing progress.

Fixed today, hobbled tomorrow

Optimists will point out that America is unlikely to face a European-style debt crisis in the near future, but the slow-burning fuse is itself a problem. One positive side-effect of Europe’s crisis is that it has forced euro-zone countries to raise their retirement ages and rationalise pensions and health-care promises. America, which has the biggest structural budget deficit in the rich world bar Japan, will become an outlier in its failure to deal with the fiscal consequences of an ageing population. Its ageing is slower than Europe’s but, as its debt piles up and business and consumer confidence is dampened, the eventual crunch will be more painful.

The saddest thing about this week’s deal is how unaware Messrs Obama and Boehner seem to be of the wider damage their petty partisanship is doing to their country. National security is not just about the number of tanks or rockets you have. As it has failed to deal with the single currency, Europe’s standing has crumbled in the world. Why should developing countries trust American leadership, when it seems incapable of solving anything at home? And while the West’s foremost democracy stays paralysed, China is making decisions and forging ahead.

This week Mr Obama boasted that he had fulfilled his mandate by raising taxes on the rich. In fact, by failing once again to clear up America’s fundamental fiscal trouble, he and Republican leaders are building Brussels on the Potomac.

via economist.com