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Diane Keaton Adds New Book Called ‘House’ to Her Housing Collection | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Serial house flipper Diane Keaton, who has also been known to light up the big screen and fashion pages with her uniquely quirky style, has a new book.
It’s called “House,” and the coffee-table offering by arty book purveyor Rizzoli doubles down on Keaton’s outsized reputation as a housing connoisseur, which we have blogged about time and again, thanks to her perfectionist precision in buying, restoring and selling homes built by renowned architects such as Wallace Neff and Ralph Flewelling.
Keaton’s flipping work includes the magnificent 1927 Spanish colonial in Beverly Hills that she restored then sold. According to the Los Angeles Times, that home was later used as the set for the pilot of the show “The New Normal,” whose co-creator Ryan Murphy had bought the home from Keaton. The Academy Award-winning actress’s influence was felt in designing the studio sets for the series:
Production designer Tony Fanning said Keaton, a well-known preservationist, was a big factor on the Monterey-influenced interiors. ‘She inspired me,’ Fanning said. ‘Her book California Romantica: Spanish Colonial and Mission-Style Houses really shows her love for, and understanding of, how clean and stark and minimal the interiors are meant to be.”
In between all her own buying and selling, including her latest home in Pacific Palisades that she purchased earlier this year for $5.75 million, Keaton had time to produce the new book, which came out this week.
In “House,” Keaton showcases high-concept houses where repurposed existing structures are key elements or where new houses take their cue from iconic architectural forms.
In an interview with The New York TImes Magazine, Keaton says her love of old homes has not changed: “What’s fun about this particular book is to see who’s working now and what they’re doing with modern structures. These houses are very charming to me.”
Like all things Keaton, the homes and structures she features in “House” could be construed as a kooky woman’s penchant for architectural oddities. However, it doesn’t take too long to realize that she has a keen and disciplined eye that takes account of the offbeat or idiosyncratic only to affirm those elements as essential to American taste, design and, ultimately, culture.
via zillow.com
Pending home sales retreat after hitting 2-yr high | Bedford Hills Real Estate
Pending home sales retreated in August after hitting a two-year high in the previous month, a trade group reported Thursday. . The pending-home-sales index fell to 99.2 from a upwardly revised 101.9 in July, the National Association of Realtors said The NAR initially said the July index was at 101.7. “The performance in month-to-month contract signings has been uneven with ongoing shortages of lower prices inventory in much of the country,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the NAR. Compared to the same period in 2011, pending home sales were up 10.7%, marking the 15th straight month of year-on-year gains. A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed, and an index of 100 is equal to the average level of contract activity during 2001.
Realtors fault low appraisals for sluggish housing market | Bedford Hills NY Homes
When Justin Olson put his Southwest-style ranch house outside Phoenix on the market, he got what he was expecting: an immediate batch of offers, virtually all above his asking price, which was set intentionally low to attract interest at $197,500. He chose an offer of $210,000.
But then came an unpleasant surprise. An appraiser for the buyer’s bank said the house was worth only $195,000. That limited the amount that the bank would lend, forcing the buyer to come up with more cash or negotiate a lower price.
“There was just no way I was selling that house for less than $200,000,” Olson said. His broker, Brett Barry of Homesmart, advised him that there was little chance of changing the appraiser’s mind. Olson said, “The part that blows me away — the appraisal can be such an arbitrary, personal decision and there is no appeals process.”
Adding to his indignation, a similar house two doors away was appraised and sold for $225,000.
Appraisals are generally ordered by banks so they can verify the value of collateral before granting a mortgage. Before the housing crash, when home values seemed only to rise, appraisals were almost an afterthought.
But now, with banks far more cautious about lending, a low appraisal can torpedo a deal.
The problem is so widespread that this week the National Association of Realtors blamed faulty appraisals for holding back the housing recovery, saying its members had reported that more than a third of all deals were canceled, delayed or renegotiated to a lower price because of a low appraisal. Several real estate agents said they were starting to include appraisal contingencies in their contracts, spelling out how much a buyer would be willing to pay in cash if the appraisal fell short.
Appraisers use previous sales of comparable houses to help value a home. If prices are just starting to climb, and sales take two or three months to close, there can be a lag before the change in prices is observed.
The Realtors report said appraisers were improperly using foreclosures and neglected properties as comparable homes, failing to account for market conditions like scarce inventory and bidding wars, and working in areas where they lack local expertise. The report faulted banks for using inexperienced appraisers and for creating unrealistic requirements, like six comparable sales instead of three, at a time of few sales.
“It’s holding sellers off the market,” said Jed Smith, the managing director of quantitative research for the Realtors group. “Sales volume could probably be an additional 10 to 15 percent higher if we had normal lending practices and if we had normal appraisal practices.” That in turn, he said, would create more jobs.
Appraisers and real estate brokers agreed that a ban, imposed since the housing crash, on loan originators’ handpicking appraisers had led to the use of appraisal management companies that take a healthy cut of the consumer’s fee and hire inexperienced, low-cost appraisers.
But appraisers took issue with the complaints and pointed out that unlike real estate agents, they have no bias or incentive to help complete a deal.
“Appraisers don’t set the market; they reflect what’s happening in the market,” said Ken Chitester, a spokesman for the Appraisal Institute, a professional association. “So don’t shoot the messenger. Blaming the appraiser for a bad housing market is like blaming the weatherman because you don’t like the weather.”
Olson and his buyer compromised on a price of $205,000, less than initially offered and therefore, some might say, less than the house was worth.
But any transaction involving a mortgage is limited by the appraisal — an assessment that is part science, part art and is based on a variety of factors like location and square footage.
Though Olson’s house was in good condition, the house nearby that sold for more had at least $30,000 worth of upgrades, said Craig Young, the broker who represented the seller. But Young said appraisals could still be unpredictable, pointing out that a home across the street sold for even more, $239,000.
Some appraisers said agents misunderstand the way homes are valued. For example, although bank-owned homes generally sell at a discount, that is not true in every neighborhood, said Dan McKinnon, who runs an appraisal company with his wife in Phoenix. Appraisers, therefore, do not automatically make adjustments if they are using such sales for comparison. Some bank-owned homes are in good condition, and in some neighborhoods bank-owned sales dominate the market and thus determine prices.
“If that property is in similar condition to your subject, it is direct competition,” McKinnon said.
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An American dream built on pain, self-interest | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
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How to Schedule your Pins on Pinterest | Bedford Hills NY Realtor
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How Search and Online Reputation Management Impacts your Brand | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Appearing on the first page of a Google search can be the difference between the success or the failure of your business.
The smart business owners and the savvy operators of eCommerce stores know that the free traffic delivered by search engines is worth gold to a business.
Research shows that ranking first on Google produces over 40 percent of all clicks to websites. Listing on the first page of a search, results in over 90 percent of all clicks. Now that is important in a digital economy!
Also a Google search can produce a negative or positive impression about a brand depending on what content and links appear in the search results. So online reputation management is also an important activity.
For a long time, Search Engine Optimization and Online Reputation Management have been looked upon as two parallel services. Google recently has changed how it performs its search. These updates to the search engine algorithms were titled “Panda” and the most recent changes were called “Penguin“.
So with these changes where does the future of both these services lie?
Let’s breakdown each of the services.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
When SEO started, it was easy to do. There were guaranteed success methods and approaches such as the following produced great results.
- Keyword density
- Meta tags
- Content
There were sites which went up overnight by acquiring links from questionable sources. Spamming an important keyword on the page was a very likely affair. People posted articles on blog networks, with each topic as unrelated as chalk and cheese!
The creation of low-quality, thin content was an easy option for a lot of people who were trying to gain success overnight! This list can go on and on!
Anything that is abused over time is likely to burn out. And so did these practices!
Google Wants Quality Content
Google’s Panda update was aimed at providing more relevant and quality content to users. This update was rolled out in the USA in February 2011, with various refreshes and updates over the course of the next 16 months. Panda 3.8 was released in the end of June 2012. While webmasters were still trying to come to terms with the Panda update (about 11.8% of all searches were affected with the first update.)
Google recently rolled out the Penguin update (about 3.1% of all search queries were affected). This update was aimed at keeping a check on
- Link schemes
- Exact anchor text linking
- Blog networks
- Duplicate content etc
Here is a great infographic comparing Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they affect your Brand’s visibility to the Google search engine.
Infographic by Reload Media – Difference between Google Penguin & Panda
Content Marketing is Vital to SEO
Post these two updates, the SEO world has started viewing the terms ‘content’ and ‘links’ differently. For an SEO guy, content started focusing more on pieces that were not only unique and engaging but also something that a user could associate with!
Content Marketing became a term that every SEO expert started relating with more closely!
SEO agencies have started rolling out extensive content marketing plans for their clients, focusing on the creation of detailed content plans including the following
- Blogs
- PDF documents
- Whitepapers,
- eBooks,
- Presentations,
- Image syndication
You name a medium, and they have targeted it! SEO started focusing strongly on content marketing, wherein content marketing has become the crux of any SEO campaign.
Online Reputation Management (ORM)
ORM is one of the most dynamic activities online and one of the most difficult too. It is the only activity where you have little or no control over different situations and/or circumstances which can completely turn around all the hard work invested into a campaign!
An outsider speaking about your brand, the brand’s offline activities, and the actions of an important entity associated with the brand, all these can completely change the statistics of your campaign overnight! Positive mentions, neutral mentions and negative mentions! These more or less rule the life of that person who is trying to protect your online reputation.
Let’s run through the aim of any ORM campaign:
- Ensure that the client get as much positive exposure as possible. Try and get as many positive mentions up in the top 10/20/30 results!
- If it isn’t positive, ensure that you have neutral content about your brand!
- Neutralize the NEGATIVE content pieces!!!!
The easiest way to go about doing this is to ensure that you have positive/neutral content online talking about your brand. (Not that it is easy to do that!)
Also, since you work closely with the brand, you become the official channel of sorts, responsible for creating content and syndication across mediums and platforms! The content creation involves having an exhaustive content plan in place and using various mediums including videos, blogs, articles, etc.
Does this Sound Similar to SEO?
The lines distinguishing both these services are becoming less distinct by each passing day. The objective of both SEO and ORM now align towards the creation of good, unique and engaging content. Content marketing remains the focus of both services. Reaching out to new people, gaining greater visibility and creating a stronger brand presence are extremely important. The principle of SEO is now to ensure that not only is your brand reaching out to more people but also focus on creating a strong brand presence online.
SEO is Now Part of Brand Building
Brand building is becoming a more integral part of SEO activity! ORM has by principle always concentrated on promoting the brand!
It seems that a new service package offering Branding + SEO + ORM is the call of the hour. Anyone who has an online store, not only wants to increase their presence and standing, but also wants to ensure that their brand is being recognized by their target audience. It is essentially the first step to become a major player and stand out in a many player market! I can guarantee that this will not only be used by the big fish who are well established and will rely more on the monitoring and the reputation side of things but also by the small startups looking for a strong branding campaign to promote themselves and garner greater visibility!
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6 paths to success for buyers in tight markets | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
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What Exactly is Quality Content? | Bedford Hills Realtor
5 Tips to Stop Failing at Social Media Marketing | Bedford Hills Real Estate
Over 800 million people in the world are on Facebook, including over 180 million Americans, or 1 in 2 adults. Twitter just topped 300 million accounts. Small business owners in droves are trying to capitalize on the trends, but few are reaping the benefits. For most local business owners, the temptation is to use social networks to promote their businesses and to broadcast their messages.
But if you take off your marketing cap and put on your customer cap, you’ll realize that consumers are already pummeled by marketing and advertising messages all day long. The secret to social media for small business owners is being human – being the sort of person at a cocktail party who listens attentively, tells great stories, shows interest in others and is authentic and honest. In other words, the secret is to simply be likeable – and that means creating value for others.
Here are 5 specific tips for small business owners to enjoy more success at social media:
- Listen before you talk. Before your first tweet, search Twitter for people talking about your business, and for people talking about your competitors. Search using words that your prospective customers would say. For example, if you’re an accountant, use Twitter to search for people tweeting the words “need an accountant” in your town. You’ll be surprised how many people are already looking for you.
- Don’t tell your customers to like you and follow you; tell them why and how. Everywhere you turn, you see “Like us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter.” Huh? Why? How? Give your customers a reason to connect with you on social networks (what’s in it for them?) and then make it easy. Note the difference between these two calls to action: “Like my book’s page on Facebook” and “Get answers to all your social media questions at http://Facebook.com/LikeableBook.“
- Ask questions. Wondering why nobody’s responding to your posts on Facebook? It’s probably because you’re not asking questions. Social media is about engagement and having a conversation, not about promoting. If a pizza place posts on Facebook, “”Come on by, 2 pizzas for just $12,” nobody will comment, and nobody will show up. If that pizza place posts, “What’s your favorite topping?” people will comment online — and then be more likely to show up.
- Share pictures and videos. People love photos. The biggest reason Facebook has gone from zero to 800 million users in seven years is photos. Photos and videos tell stories about you in ways that text alone cannot. You don’t need a production budget, either. Use your smartphone to take pictures and short videos of customers, staff, and cool things at your business, and then upload them directly to Facebook and Twitter. A picture really is worth a thousand words.
- Spend at least 30 minutes a day on social media. If you bought a newspaper ad or radio ad, you wouldn’t spend five minutes on it or relegate it to interns. Plus, there’s a lot to learn, and every week, new tools and opportunities across social networks emerge. Spend real time each day reading and learning, listening and responding, and truly joining the conversation. The more time you put in to social media, the more benefits your business will receive.
Above all else, keep that customer cap on, and follow the golden rule: Would you yourself click the “Like” button, the Follow button, or retweet button if you saw your own business on Facebook and Twitter? Would YOU want to be friends with your business at a cocktail party?
Dave Kerpen is the cofounder and CEO of Likeable, an award-winning social media agency, and author of New York Times Bestseller, Likeable Social Media.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.
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The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.… View full profile
This article originally appeared on Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) and has been republished with permission.
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