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Repair rather than replace your carpeting | Bedford Hills Realtor
Stains, tears, burns, loose areas and other issues with your carpeting can be a real eyesore, and in some cases can even be a potentially dangerous tripping hazard. Rather than replace an entire roomful of expensive carpeting, you can often repair those problem areas instead.
Restretching carpeting
Wall-to-wall carpeting is installed by stretching it into place in the room. Over time, the weight of furniture and the action of people moving over the carpeting can cause the carpet’s backing to break down, resulting in random loose, wrinkled areas. When that happens, assuming the carpeting is otherwise in good shape, it can be restretched to remove the wrinkles.
When the carpet is first stretched into place, it’s hooked onto a tack strip that’s located around the perimeter of the room, just out from the wall. The tack strip has hundreds of tiny nails in it, which are angled toward the wall. The carpet is stretched over the tack strip during installation, then as it’s released from the stretching process, it slides back and catches on the angled nails, holding it in place.
A small area of loose carpet can be restretched using a knee kicker. This is a specialized tool with angled metal teeth on the bottom at one end, and a big pad at the other end. Place the kicker on the carpet about six inches away from the wall with the teeth down and in contact with the carpet, then apply steady pressure with your knee against the pad on the end of the kicker. This will push the carpet toward the wall, and allow you to release it from the tack strip and pull it up.
With the carpet loose, you can now use the kicker to restretch and tighten the carpet back up over the tack strip. Each time you kick the kicker with your knee, the carpet will move over the tack strip and catch, tightening it a little further.
When the wrinkles are gone, maintain a light, steady pressure on the kicker with your knee, and press the carpet down firmly into contact with the tack strip. Use the edge of a hammer or other metal tool for this — NOT your hand (all those little nails are sharp!). Finally, trim off any excess carpet you may have created at the wall.
Larger areas of loose carpet are handled with a tool called a carpet stretcher. Carpet stretchers have a series of telescoping poles with a pad at one end and a large head with angled teeth and a top-mounted handle at the other end.
A carpet stretcher works like a kicker, but over a larger area. The padded end is placed against a wall, then the poles are extended so that the head ends up near the opposite wall. Pressure is then applied to the handle, allowing the teeth to grip the carpet and move the head, stretching the carpet.
Carpet repairs
To take care of burn mark or a stain you can’t remove, you’ll need to patch in a new piece of carpeting, so the first issue is to locate some carpet that matches. If you saved some scrap pieces from when the carpet was first installed, you’re ahead of the game.
If not, your next best option is to take some matching carpeting out of a small closet. You can then replace the flooring in that closet with something else — a remnant of complimentary carpet from a carpet store, or, better yet, a little bit of ceramic tile or prefinished wood flooring.
One of the best methods for repairing small areas of damage is to use a carpet “cookie cutter.” This is a special, round tool with a sharp blade on the bottom that cuts out the damaged carpet, and then cuts a perfectly matching patch from a piece of scrap. The patch is then adhered in place with a special self-adhesive disk, or with carpet repair tape.
Larger repairs or damaged seams are more difficult to deal with. For a large damage area, first the damaged area is cut out, then a patch is cut from matching carpet. After carefully fitting and trimming the patch, it’s adhered into place using a special carpet heat-seaming iron and hot-melt tape. The tape is placed under the carpet and centered under the seam, then the hot iron is placed on the tape, melting the adhesive. The carpet is then pressed down into the hot adhesive, making a permanent joint.
Loose seams are repaired in the same way. The edges of the seam are carefully trimmed to remove any damaged material, then a kicker is used to push the seam back together temporarily while it’s glued back together with hot tape.
For do-it-yourselfers who want to give this a shot, most of these tools, including the seaming iron, stretcher, kicker and usually even the cookie cutter, are available at most rental yards. Otherwise, contact your local carpet store for referrals to an experienced carpet repair person.
via inman.com
BofA tallies $15.8 billion in mortgage aid to struggling borrowers | Bedford Hills Realtor
A view of the Bank of America’s Tower in New York (Eduardo Munoz Reuters, REUTERS / October 24, 2012)
A Super Simple Explanation of Inbound Marketing | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
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Video Advertising Sees Massive Growth in UK, Agencies Need Guidance | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Brightroll did some research over in the UK to see how video advertising is getting on there and it seems that stiff upper lip mentality is working for them as things are really picking up. The second annual survey and report, the 2012 UK Video Advertising Report, gathers insight from more than 100 top decision makers and media buyers at leading UK advertising agencies and shares their unique perspective of the UK video advertising landscape.
As with all Brightroll surveys, things should be weighed carefully before making any decisions. After all, it’s a survey and included a small fraction of the industry as a whole. With that said, let’s get onto the numbers.
Video Advertising Reach Rises in the UK
Around 63% of the UK population watches a video online each month. That’s a pretty good reach. Meanwhile, about 65% of that audience sees video ads monthly which is around 28.6 million people who are seeing a billion ads a month (comScore).
Part of why those numbers are all on the rise is because more advertisers and agencies believe in its efficacy. 87% surveyed believe it more effective than display and 52% believe it better than TV. Brightroll attributes some lower numbers to a confusion as to what digital video is. Maybe more ReelSEO reading is necessary?
Some of these beliefs could be attributed to the often made assumption that VOD (video on demand) and digital video are one in the same. However, digital video encompasses more than just VOD and includes in-app, user-generated content, gaming, or anywhere video can run.
When it comes to digital video advertising, many UK advertisers may spend their budgets specifically on VOD, working directly with broadcasters. In fact, when asked who they are most inclined to buy video inventory from, 41 percent of respondents indicate they are most likely to buy video inventory from a broadcaster with 22 percent who are most likely to buy from an ad network.
Where Are UK Video Advertisers Placing Inventory?
A lot of those UK companies are advertising outside of the country. A good amount of ad networks are placing ads in the US and Canada, while publishers are looking to Germany and the US for their main purchasing areas. Broadcasters are the ones doing the most buying in the UK itself followed by ad networks.
Considering that a lot in the UK think of digital video in terms of VOD it’s not all that surprising that the broadcasters are leading the ad buys there right now. It must be them trying to lure the online video viewers away from the short-form online content they’re watching because the average time spent with a video is 5 minutes and only 5% of videos online are from the UK broadcasters. Clearly they might feel threatened.
What Matters to UK Video Advertisers?
When looking at the how and why of ad placement, targeting tops the requirements with over 50% saying that’s most valuable. Reach was just around 37% and then everything else was minimal, including price versus TV.
Meanwhile, ad spend is usually based on cost-per-view (CPV) with CPM (cost-per-impression) second and engagement third.
It seems that if you’re offering video ad placement and hoping to reach UK advertisers you’ve now got a pretty clear picture of what to offer them and pique their interest. CPV with excellent targeting would be the ideal one-two punch of features for them.
In fact, demographic targeting is the most often desired form of targeting at 35% while behavior is used by 25% and contextual is around 20%. Data and geographic were lower at 15% and 5% roughly.
Measuring the Success of Video Advertising
Determining the success of an online video advertising campaign is usually campaign or company specific. In the survey they found that for the most part it’s views (30%) that are the measurement. Hovering near the 15% point are conversion, brand uplift and CTR with Sales impact at about 10%.
GRP isn’t all that popular there which is telling since most of the ads seem to be placed by TV broadcasters. I suppose that goes hand-in-hand with that targeting over reach from the previous graph.
UK Taking Shots in the Dark? Need Guidance
The odd thing is that it seems like the UK online video ad industry is groping blindly to figure out what works best. 90% of respondents said research is vital to success, but 70% stated they had done no research. To me it almost seems like throwing money down a hole and are simply following the trend without bothering to figure out how to do it right.
The crazy thing is that when talking about barriers to online video advertising, the cost of video is the largest one for them. Just over a third cited that as the most limiting factor. Clearly, they didn’t do any research because they would have found great video ad creation platforms like ViddyAd (in beta) and places like PopTent for crowdsourced video creation, just to name a few alternative options to production company made video content.
There are far more insights in the full 2012 UK Video Advertising Report which you can pull from the Brightroll Industry Report page.
![UK effectiveness trend e1352397015777 Digital Video Advertising Sees Massive Growth in UK, But Ad Agencies Need More Guidance [Study]](http://cdn3.reelstatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/UK-effectiveness-trend.png "UK-effectiveness-trend")
![UK ad placement 606x173 Digital Video Advertising Sees Massive Growth in UK, But Ad Agencies Need More Guidance [Study]](http://cdn3.reelstatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/UK-ad-placement.jpg "UK-ad-placement")
![UK ad spending Digital Video Advertising Sees Massive Growth in UK, But Ad Agencies Need More Guidance [Study]](http://cdn3.reelstatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/UK-ad-spending.jpg "UK-ad-spending")
via reelseo.com
NAR economist Lawrence Yun’s forecast: Higher inflation, higher home prices now | Real Estate in Bedford Hills NY
ORLANDO — NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun is speaking at the National Association of Realtors convention here right now.
He is taking about inflation, which has been relatively low for two decades. He says it will stay at about 2 percent next year.
But he says we should anticpiate higher inflation by 2015. “No threatening inflation next year, 2 percent. Eventually we may reach something much higher, 4, 5, 6 percent by 2013. Well above the Federal Reserve’s preferred rate of 2 percent.” The pressure on inflation will come from the large budget deficit.
“Rents are rising. Inflation pressure will be building in the rental market. Vacancies are falling and rents are rising.
The Fed has an “ultra-loose monetary policy, 0 percent, an unprecedented low rate. You cannot borrow at this rate but Mark Vinter and Wells Fargo can.”
The mortgage interest deduction will be discussed as a way to increase revenue and decrease the public debt. But Yun says it will not happen because of the efforts of his audience, the Realtors, to pressure the government to keep it in place.
Higher inflation means that the home mortgage interest rates will trend up.
Yun is forecasting “meaningfully higher home prices, which went up 4 to 5 percent in 2012.
“Home price growht ckoud slow or accelerate depending on housing starts.” Yun ecpects a 15 percent cumulative growth in home prices over the next three years. The rise in prices are not showing any signs of slowing down.” Arizona has already seen a 30 percent increase since the bust.
“Rises in prices will bring more underwater homeowners above water and then they can participate in the market.”
Her prdicts the price will rise from $176,000 to $195,ooo. “The train has left the station, but it is still a great time to buy, because if you wait, the train will be farther from the station and you will miss the chance for wealth creation.”
Realtors are seeing more traffic, and showings are consistently strong. Pending home sales are trending up.
Home sales will be 4.6 million units this year and 5.05 million units in 2013, says Yun.
Employment is a key to home purchasing. While the unemployment rate is falling, Yun looks at the “employment rate.” About 62 percent of adults have jobs. This number is not increasing. Only enough jobs are being created to soak up the new graduates. But there is plenty of room for improvement, he says. “We need 250,000 new jobs every month for the next eight years to get back to a normal job market. It is trending up, but it could trend up faster.”
Builder inventory is at a 50-year low. Builder activity is rising, but only from a very low level and housing starts are at less than half of the 50-year average of 1.5 million units per year.
Good new for all segments of housing, he said, is that the “shadow inventory” of distressed properties is shrinking. Foreclosures are clogged in judicial states and flowing freely in non-judicial states such as Arizona. Whiel home prices are up 7 percent in Miami, they are up 19 percent in Arizona.
Yun forecasts a more unqual distribution of wealth. “That is something we need to monitor.”
He is putting a lot of pressure on the builders: If they don’t build enough new homes, it will rise prices, which would be good for existing homeowners but will cut into home affordability for all those renters who want to become homeowners. What we are seeing now is that wealthy investors play a strong role in the market and are keeping some “end-user” buyers out. This is evident in Sarasota, where all-cash investors are outbidding buyers who would live in a house they would buy with a mortgage.
Renting is up strongly and homeownership is off a bit. Normally, homeowners are 66 percent of the market. And the household formation increase has been more in the rental market rather than home purchases.
Hurricane Sandy’s property destruction will provide building permit impetus in New Jersey, boosting the market there in a few months.
Florida: Yun points out that Florida’s job growth, weak or falling recently, since 1939 has boomed, and if that overall growth trend resumes, the state could run out of prime real estate development land, particularly as Chinese and Brazilian buyers come to the state.
His applause line: “The financial institutions are flush with cash. Why are they not lending?”
He closes with this: Keep the mortgage interest deduction. Taking it away will be a huge hit to the housing industry.
Wells Fargo economist Mark Vinter comes back on stage and says, “Our bank is lending. It is that other bank.”
Chase? Bank of America? I will have to ask him that later.
In case you did not know: Yun is pronounced Yoon.
5 Great Plants for Indoor Gardens | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Does your green thumb start twitching when the weather turns cool? Are you a yard-less soul, yearning for a place to till and toil?
The great news is this: You don’t need acres of rich, black soil in order to reap a harvest. In fact, indoor gardening has become a sustainable and trendy way to grow everything from fruits and veggies to flowers and herbs.
Amy Pennington, author of “Apartment Gardening: Plants, Projects, and Recipes for Growing Food in Your Urban Home” (Sasquatch Books, 2011), lives in a one-room apartment with an east-facing deck. Over the years, she’s crowded the space with dozens of pots, containers, hanging baskets and window boxes.
She considers small kitchen gardens the perfect extension of a well-stocked pantry and has narrowed down her choices to vegetables and herbs that are prolific producers and add big flavor to meals.
Getting started
Indoor gardens can be created in whatever space you have available. Perhaps you’ll want to start with a windowsill or table; shelves provide ample room for plants while taking up little space. Or perhaps you have an entire room to devote to your new garden.
When selecting the perfect growing spot, make sure that adequate light reaches every plant. If using artificial light, HID (high intensity discharge) lights, which hang down from the ceiling and convert electricity into usable energy for plants, are highly recommended. Areas with tile or linoleum floors are best, or you’ll want to use tarps to protect wood floors or carpet from unavoidable drops of water.
A good planting medium is essential when setting up an indoor garden. Soil found outdoors is generally too heavy and dense for use in containers. Instead, shop for a mix that is specific to indoor plants – one that will hold moisture and nutrients, and drain well.
When deciding what to grow, plant size and production should be serious considerations. Growing sweet corn indoors, for example, would be difficult for most considering that stalks grow 6 to 7 feet tall and must be grouped in order for them to pollinate. Then, after a 60- to 90-day growing period, each stalk will only yield two to three ears of corn.
Five smarter, more obvious choices for an indoor garden include:
Herbs
Even the most space-challenged indoor gardeners can find room to grow a couple of varieties of herbs. Fill a planter with quality potting soil, plant your favorite herb seeds and put the pot in a spot that gets about six hours of sunlight each day. Herbs you may want to grow include basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro, rosemary, chives, Vietnamese coriander and thyme.
Tomatoes
Small-fruited varieties of tomatoes often do well in indoor spaces. Cherry-type tomatoes (Tumbling Tom Red, Sweet Chelsea, Sun Gold and Sweet Cherry 100, for example) and grape tomatoes (Juliet, Juliet Roma Grape) will put your gardening skills to the test while producing bowls full of tasty red, orange and yellow fruit. If space is especially tight, consider growing tomatoes in an upside-down planter suspended from the ceiling; the plants grow downward out of a hole in the bottom of the planter.
Salad greens
Lettuce, spinach and endive generally do well when grown indoors. Loose-leaf lettuce is easy to grow and, because lettuce is a short-season crop, you can get an ongoing harvest by making small plantings every week or two. Because lettuce is made up of 90 percent water and has shallow roots, you’ll need to be sure to keep soil evenly moist but not soggy. In a warm, dry house, you’ll likely need to water plants every other day. To prevent fungal diseases, it’s best to water from the bottom using a watering tray. Look for the words “baby” or “little” on the seed packets when selecting the lettuce for your indoor garden.
Radishes
Because they require very little fuss, radishes are perfect for rookie indoor gardeners. Nearly any container will work to grow radishes as long as it’s at least 12 inches across. Unless you have a deep container, you’ll want to plant round (also referred to as “globular”) varieties. Radishes grow so fast that you’ll be ready to harvest in just three weeks. For continuous harvest, make additional plantings every one to two weeks.
Green beans
Yes, healthy beans require a lot of light (at least six hours of sunlight daily), but you can grow them indoors if you’re able to supplement natural sunlight with artificial grow lights. Use a container that’s at least 12 inches deep, and look for varieties of beans suited for container gardens, such as Topcrop, Tendercrop and Derby. Most varieties will be ready to harvest 50 to 60 days after planting.
via zillow.com
Mortgage rates, bank stocks plunge post election | Bedford Hills Realtor
The Dow Jones industrial average is plunging post-election, falling by as much as 245 points. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index also falling as much as 27, or 1.6%, with bank stocks taking some of the biggest losses.
Bank of America ($9.39 0.16%), JPMorgan Chase ($40.40 0%) , Wells Fargo ($32.35 0%) and Goldman Sachs Group ($115.27 0%) are all losing stock value as of midday trading.
Investors are selling off because of the fear of what a fiscal cliff negotiation will mean, said chief investment strategist James Paulsen at Wells Capital Management in a statement.
However, with the economic uncertainty comes changes in mortgage rates because investors are piling up mortgage-backed bonds, driving bond prices up. As a result, mortgage rates are heading down, according to active loan officer Dan Green of Waterstone Mortgage.
For mortgage borrowers in locations such as San Jose, Cali. borrowing at the local conforming loan limit of $625,000, with the mortgage price by 1 discount point, lowers the closing cost by $6,255.
The change is also affecting multiple mortgage products such as HARP 2.0 improvement, FHA Streamline Refinance improvement and BA Streamline Refinance improvement, Green is reporting.
via housingwire.com
Andrew Cuomo: ‘No Reason to Panic’ Over Gas Shortages | Bedford Hills Real Estate
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’s signed an executive order waiving a requirement that fuel tankers register and pay tax before unloading.
He also is threatening utility companies’ rights to operate in the state in the future if they don’t immediately put power restoration work into high gear.
The governor says there’s “no reason to panic” about gas shortages. He said Friday that tankers are now making “great progress” delivering fuel and that his order will help get gasoline to consumers faster. He also says terminals that suffered damage in Superstorm Sandy are coming back online.
But he also is warning utilities that they must devote full personnel and equipment to power restoration. Cuomo says utilities operate only with the state’s permission and he will hold them accountable.
via abcnews.go.com
New Home Sales: More Good News for the Housing Market | Bedford Hills Realtor
Sales of new single-family homes rose 5.7 percent in the month September, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 389,000, according to data released today by the Commerce Department that gives continuing indications of a housing market recovery.
The rate of new home sales was 27 percent higher than the seasonally adjusted annual rate of 306,000 for the September 2011 housing market, according to the federal data. The average price of a new home sold in September was $292,400, down slightly from $293,900 for August but up from $255,400 for September of 2011.
September’s rate of new home sales is the highest since the home buyer tax credit expired in early 2012, according to an Eye on Housing blog published today by the National Association of Home Builders, or NAHB, a Washington, DC-based industry association. The three-month moving average of new home sales has been steadily increasing for more than 12 months, fueling a growing consensus that the U.S. housing market has turned a corner.
The increase in sales is reducing the inventory of available new homes to a seven-year low, according to the NAHB, which reports the existing supply of new homes will last for 4.5 months if sales continue at the current pace. The number of new homes that are completed and move-in ready remains at a record low of 38,000, according to the NAHB, which describes home builders as “cautious about building ahead of the market.” Tight credit conditions remain a drag on builders’ outlook for the housing market.
Median home prices jumped 11.7 percent from September 2011 to $242,400 in September 2012, according to the NAHB. The group attributes the price increase primarily to buyers with equity and access to credit moving up to more expensive homes, rather than an overall increase in prices for the housing market.
The latest data also reveals significant regional variations in home prices, according to the NAHB. Over the third quarter, sales rose by 18.5 percent in the Northeast, but fell 8.2 percent in the Midwest. New home sales rose 4.9 percent in the South and 4 percent in the West.
More housing market news is due Thursday when the National Association of Realtors is scheduled to report pending home sales for the month of September.
