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Bedford Hills NY Homes

Bedford Hills Real Estate | The Hottest Real Estate Markets On Earth

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Location, Location, Location!

This screen shot is from a villa in France.  It probably costs a few million euros to own that living room. But when it comes to real estate values around the world, this villa might be in a great part of the planet, but France’s overall real estate values have fallen by 1.6% in the 12 months ending Dec. 31, 2012. Here is a look at the top 10 places where prices are rising, including a look at some property values in what has become the hottest real estate markets around.

 

Location, Location, Location! – In Photos: The Hottest Real Estate Markets On Earth – Forbes.

Rooftop solar takes off across California as costs come down | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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California’s groundbreaking efforts to encourage homeowners and businesses to install rooftop solar panels were so successful in 2012 that the program is now effectively winding down, according to a new report.

A record 391 megawatts of solar power were installed statewide in 2012, a growth of 26 percent from 2011, according to a report by the California Solar Initiative released Wednesday.

“The program has made solar affordable for ordinary Californians,” said Susannah Churchill of the San Francisco-based solar advocacy group Vote Solar. “Solar is a classic California success story.”

In January 2007, California launched an unprecedented $3.3 billion effort to install 3,000 megawatts of new solar over

the next decade and transform the market for solar energy by reducing the cost of solar-generating equipment.

One megawatt is enough to power 750 to 1,000 homes. But because the sun doesn’t shine all the time, solar industry experts say that one megawatt of solar can power about 200 households.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s California Solar Initiative, known as CSI,provides rebates for residential and commercial customers of the state’s three large, investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

The initiative’s road map calls for 1,750 new megawatts of solar power to be installed on residential and commercial roofs in the state by

 

 

Rooftop solar takes off across California as costs come down – San Jose Mercury News.

HGTV’s ‘House Hunters’ Episode Featuring Bedford Airs Wednesday | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Fans eagerly awaiting the “House Hunters” episode featuring several Bedford, Mount Kisco and Katonah homes will have to wait just one more day.

The latest episode, which also features local real estate agent Justin Pieragostini, premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday on HGTV. Originally scheduled to premiere in April, the episode highlighting Pieragostini helping a family relocate to Katonah from Boston is set for the latest episode Wednesday night.

The episode marks the first time HGTV has showcased Westchester County, Pieragostini said, adding that the episode is worth the wait.

“I am so excited to showcase this community on TV,” Pieragostini said Monday. “It’s about featuring that place we all call home and I can’t wait for people to see it. Northern Westchester is a close-knit community full of great people so it was wonderful to bring some attention to that.”

New residents Steven and Megan Grskovic and their three children are featured in the episode, where Pieragostini guided the family through Bedford, Mt. Kisco and Katonah.

“Honestly, we were so caught up in the emotions of the house hunting experience, we never really thought about our ‘story’ until Justin threw out the idea of sharing it on House Hunters,” said Steven Grskovic, in a press release. “Ultimately, we were intrigued by having a unique keepsake for our family to look back on. Justin kept reminding us through the home buying process that once complete we’ll be happy we documented it and he was right. We’re really looking forward to the episode.”

 

HGTV’s ‘House Hunters’ Episode Featuring Bedford Airs Wednesday | The Bedford Daily Voice.

Good-Bye Low Mortgage Rates; Good-Bye Housing Recovery | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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The already struggling U.S. housing market recovery took it on the chin this week…

While most investors were focused on the collapsing stock market, courtesy of the Fed’s announcement Wednesday that it would pull back on its $85.0-trillion-a-month paper money printing program some time later this year, bond yields rose sharply.

The yield on the bellwether 10-year U.S. Treasury bill has jumped almost 50% over the past 12 months—and that means mortgage rates are rising sharply. This should be of no surprise to my readers, as I have been warning about higher interest rates for some time now. (See “Gone Are the Days When the U.S. Bond Market Was the Place to Be.”)

If there is one factor that affects activity in the housing market the most, it is interest rates. That’s why the nail in the coffin for the housing market might now be in.

The National Association of Realtors reports first-time home buyers accounted for only 28% of all the existing-home purchases in the U.S. housing market in May. What’s even more troubling is that they have been declining in number. In April, first-time home buyers accounted for 29% of purchases; and in the same period a year ago, they bought 34% of all existing homes in the U.S. housing market. (Source: National Association of Realtors, June 20, 2013.)

Looking forward, I won’t be surprised to see the number of first-time home buyers decline even further, because the Federal Reserve has pulled the rug right out from under their feet by saying it may pull back on its quantitative easing later this year, thus pushing mortgage rates sharply higher.

The standard 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumped to 4.24% today, up from only 3.67% a month ago.

As I have been writing, the U.S. housing market has been propped up this year by institutional investors moving in and buying single-family homes for the sole purpose of renting them out—for investment purposes. Institutional investors became major buyers of single-family homes in key areas of the U.S. housing market and even bid up prices.

But now that yields across the board are rising, is the housing market that attractive to institutional investors? Money flows to the highest and safest returns. With rates rising, the big-money guys might finally have other investment alternatives to look at. Combine less focus on the housing market from institutional investors with declining demand from first-time buyers and rising interest rates, and quickly the housing recovery becomes a has-been.

 

Good-Bye Low Mortgage Rates; Good-Bye Housing Recovery – Yahoo! Small Business Advisor.

Don’t Call It Home Staging. Call It Superstaging! | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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It’s not news that San Francisco home sales have been rocketing above expectations since the beginning of the year. Bay area buyers have seen themselves outbid by the cost of a mansion in their home towns; sellers have found that even an unstaged home, or even raw fixer-upper, will sell above asking within a week.

 

You might think this’d encourage laziness among sellers, but at least one boutique agency is thinking just the opposite: a little extra effort might result in record sales within record times. They call it simple marketing, but I call it “uberstaging.”

 

Climb Real Estate has been creating a niche for itself with its rolling Airstream satellite office. Now they’re talking their sellers into spending as much as $50K on pre-sale improvements, betting that the payoff will more than cover the cost.

 

The first step is to identify the potential buyer. In the case of this property, on Page Street in Hayes Valley, they  pitched their concept toward a single, professional woman in her 30s buying her first home – a powerful buying force in today’s market, by the way. Then they hired a interior designer Ian Stalling, art consultants from Art Haus, color consultant Wendy Trotter, and even landscape designer Dat Pham to create a space designed specifically for this fictitious buyer.

 

“This isn’t about the four walls,” says Chris Lim, Climb’s marketing director. “It’s about what happens in those four walls. How is your life going to be better if you buy this property? Is it that Blue Bottle coffee is just down the street? Is it the restaurants and the easy commute to downtown? How do you create a storyline that will convince someone that this is meant to be her home?” The stack of takeout menus and bottles of coffee in the kitchen are only the beginning of that story.

 

Don’t Call It Home Staging. Call It Superstaging! | Houses | HGTV FrontDoor.

Fed bungle may prompt higher mortgage rates | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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The days are getting shorter now, football closer — at least the Fed can’t take that away from us. Given its fantastic bungling this week, it might try.

First, let’s get the fairy tales out of the way. No, President Obama has not asked Fed Chair Ben Bernanke to leave; Bernanke is exhausted (which may explain some of this week), and orderly competition to succeed him began in January. And no, the market wrecks this week do not invalidate the quantitative easing (QE) campaign. It was exactly the right thing to have done.

Bernanke is an American hero, his inventiveness and courage without parallel in our peacetime history. However, the skills and instincts necessary to save us in the post-Lehman event are completely different from those required to manage a gradual tightening of policy.

Bernanke on May 22 did an expert and appropriate job of mumbling. Markets needed to be warned that QE might taper in the next several months, and be reminded that someday QE would end altogether, and in the long run Federal Reserve policy would normalize. The Fed chair’s muffled jawbone took the 10-year T-note from a broad range 1.7 percent-2.05 percent into June’s 2.08 percent-2.25 percent, mortgages just above 4 percent.

The economy may or may not be self-sustaining, but asset prices in 2013 might have begun to pre-bubble. Maybe. New Fed Gov. Jeremy Stein began to thump the bubble tub immediately on arrival. Household net worth jumped $3 trillion in the first 90 days of the year, all on stocks and houses. The delicate conundrum: Rising asset values were a principal purpose of QE and have the economy doing better; at what point do they become a bubble? Hedge the bet by bubble-burble.

The June Fed meeting concluded on Wednesday, and the written statement was harmless. Then in the post-meeting press conference Bernanke gave the most unfortunate public performance by a chairman in my memory. He is compelled to transparency and specifics of future intentions, which made QE work, but are disastrous in a tightening cycle. And he clearly does not understand why.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/06/21/fed-bungle-may-prompt-higher-mortgage-rates/#sthash.B3LcAU5U.dpuf

 

Fed bungle may prompt higher mortgage rates | Inman News.

Rates rising too quickly could hurt housing recovery | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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In the short term, the jump in interest rates is spurring home buyers in the Washington region and other hot markets to action, adding to the already frenzied competition to get a home, writes the Washington Post.

But a sustained rise would hurt a fragile housing recovery, which has climbed out of the depths of its crash with the help of record-low rates, economists said.

“The biggest threat to the recovery is that rates rise too fast,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

 

Rates rising too quickly could hurt housing recovery | HousingWire.

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton lists NY Flatiron condo | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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The couple bought their new place in The Whitman, a secure building on East 26th Street, for $10.5 million in early March, which led them to list their former home at the nearby Grand Madison for $4.475 million. The couple didn’t move far; both buildings are located in the Flatiron District and have views of Madison Square Park.

Mezvinsky bought the Grand Madison condo in 2008 for $4 million, reported the Real Deal. The couple had been living there since their marriage in 2010 until very recently, writes Zillow.

 

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton lists NY Flatiron condo | HousingWire.

Floored voted best real estate tech startup at Realogy summit | Bedford Hills Homes

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Floored, which creates interactive 3-D floor plans that allow users to walk through a virtual recreation of an actual space, was voted the best real estate tech startup today at the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit, hosted at the real estate franchisor’s Madison, N.J., headquarters.

The company took home a prize of $25,000 after attendees voted it the best real estate tech startup among three finalists that were chosen out of 15 startups that presented at the event. Selected by a panel of judges, the three finalists were: Floored, HomeZada and BuyerMLS.

Floored staff members create 3-D models by scanning spaces with a proprietary 3-D camera, using algorithms and manual tweaks to smooth the data. The resulting interactive 3-D model can be made available and shared online.

HomeZada was voted the second best startup, followed by Buyer MLS.

Realogy CEO Alex Perriello said today that the event’s purpose was to ask: ”How can we incorporate some of these, test things, or try things in a real-life situation with brokers and agents?”

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/06/18/floored-voted-best-real-estate-tech-startup-at-realogy-event/#sthash.UVjYwJo5.dpuf

 

Floored voted best real estate tech startup at Realogy summit | Inman News.

In a hot real-estate market, buyers make their pitches personal | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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With painfully few homes on the market and the “sweet” Medford Colonial the perfect place to raise the baby they are expecting, Elizabeth Deutsch and Brian Rosen were determined to vanquish the competing bidders. Not only did they offer $11,000 above the asking price, but they wrote the couple who owned the home a personal note. “Dear Caleb and Autumn,” it began.

 

Small problem: Lisa, not Autumn, is the name of Caleb’s wife. Autumn is their dog, a boxer-terrier mix : beloved, but not a decision-maker in real estate matters.

 

“They got the place anyway,” said their broker, Ed Greable of Keller Williams Realty. “The owners got a laugh out of it.”

 

You would be cheerful, too, if you were a seller in spring 2013. And if you were a buyer, you might also be writing nice notes to sellers.

 

 

With inventory down and prices rising, buyers are exhibiting the kind of frenzied behavior not seen since 2005. It is not enough that they are mobbing open houses, bidding thousands of dollars over asking price, and making all-cash offers. They are going so far as to Google owners and craft pitches in which they pretend to enjoy the same things the sellers do. Family photos are not uncommon.

 

“The garage would be a great place to store my kayak,” one aspiring buyer, a nonkayaker, wrote to a kayaking owner. Some would-be buyers linger at open houses to eavesdrop on the competition. Greable said one client regularly called him from packed open houses. “The vultures are here,” she would whisper.

 

In a hot real-estate market, buyers make their pitches personal – Lifestyle – The Boston Globe.