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Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

Positive Equity is Driving Down Defaults | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Homeowners with positive equity in their homes have fewer problem loans and are outperforming the national average for defaults. Their default rates are close to pre-crisis norms.

The latest data from Lender Processing Servicers shows that the overall equity trend has been a very positive one. “LPS’ latest data shows that the share of loans with LTVs greater than 100 percent has fallen 41 percent from a year ago. In total, there were approximately 9 million such loans, or about 18 percent of active mortgages. Some states, including the so-called ’sand states’ (Arizona, Florida, Nevada and California), are still well above the national level, at an average 28 percent, but they, too, have seen improvement over the last year, with negative equity dropping over 40 percent across those four states since January 2012, said LPS Applied Analytics Senior Vice President Herb Blecher.

However, March data also showed that the further underwater a borrower gets, the higher those problem rates rise. Borrowers with loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of just 100-110 percent are actually defaulting at more than twice the national average. For those 50 percent or more underwater, we see new problem rates of 4 percent.

“There has always been a clear correlation between higher levels of negative equity and new problem loan rates,” Blecher said.

LPS reported foreclosure starts were down 8.2 percent month over month, while foreclosure sales rose 10.1 percent. LPS looked more specifically at that situation in California, where the recent passage of the Homeowner Bill of Rights (HBoR) appears to have slowed down the foreclosure sale process considerably. In Q1 2013, foreclosure sales nationally (excluding California) increased 13 percent from Q4 2012, whereas in California they fell 35 percent during that same period.

However, the HBoR does not seem to have had a similar effect on the state’s foreclosure starts which, while down significantly from 2012 levels, are in line with the rest of the nation’s decline in referral activity following the attorneys general mortgage settlement and FHA modification initiatives.

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/05

Will the Grand Bahama Real Estate Market ever recover? | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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The question on everyone’s mind is …. Will the Grand Bahama Real Estate Market Ever Recover? The reports from our neighbors across the pond in the U.S. are that the Real Estate Market is back and the market IS recovering. In Miami, Florida only 100 miles away not only have real estate prices recovered, but there is a shortage of condos and developers are building more condos to keep up with the future demand. They are calling it a condo boom. We all know this is not the case in Grand Bahama but as a small country so heavily influenced by the U.S. market, we can not be too far behind. We usually lag behind the U.S. by about 14 months or so and we of course have our own unique problems in Freeport so the recovery may be slower than expected but the trends look positive. No one has a Crystal Ball that can see the future exactly but with the current state of the world economy there are many factors that give us an indication of the Future of Real Estate on Grand Bahama Island.

An important point to keep in mind is that it is very difficult to make broad statements about the state of the Grand Bahama Real Estate because there are many different Real Estate Markets on the Island. There is a big difference between raw land, lower income homes, high end beach front homes, condos and duplexes. No one would ask you how the weather is in the United States because that’s too general. The weather is of course different in Buffalo, New York then in Phoenix, Arizonia. So when looking at real estate we have to identify what sector of the market we are talking about especially when looking at trends.

One of the biggest problems we have on the island in my opinion for the local residential housing market is the lack of jobs and good paying jobs. This lack of jobs has caused the local residential prices to fall. If the job market improves you will see the real estate market in the residential market and all sectors of the market improve. It’s that simple. Jobs create consumer confidence and the ability for buyers to borrow money from the banks for mortgages. Not only can people borrow money but homeowners can pay their current mortgages. We need new projects and new excitement for Freeport like we are seeing in Nassau only 150 miles away. The Sunwing project whereby they will lease 500 rooms at The Grand Lucayan, have direct flights from Canada and hire over 1,000 people is certainly a good start. The announcement of the water theme park west of the Stoned Crab is good news as well. Now we need more airlift direct to Freeport, more projects and the momentum for recovery will improve.

If you look at The Freeport News there are growing pages and pages of Foreclosure Homes being sold by the banks. As long as there is a huge supply of Bank sales it will be difficult for a “normal” seller trying to sell their home so they can move up, move down or change address because buyers can buy bank distressed homes at highly discounted rates if they have cash, a good job and good credit. Real Estate is about movement and without movement you have stagnation which creates a dead market. So in light of all this we don’t need a Crystal Ball to tell us that there is high unemployment, an oversupply of homes, a big supply of bank foreclosures, banks not lending money and a flat real estate market with prices going down because sellers can’t sell due to lack of buyers.

So the future of the residential market in the short term is going to be more of the same for 2013 with a little upswing in certain sectors. Until we can clear the inventory of distressed homes and the job market improves the local real estate market will remain stagnant. This is a general statement for the local residential sector which does not mean that there won’t be buyers and sellers but the market will be very competitive and the majority of sellers will have to continue to be patient. If you are a seller in this sector be patient and do EVERYTHING you can to make your house competitive in this very difficult market. Hire a professional real estate agent and price your home for exactly what it’s worth. The strategy of pricing a home high and letting buyers make a lower offer can backfire. If you are a seller you are in competition with every other house on the market and there are more homes on the market than there are buyers hence it’s a Buyer’s Market.

Is the Real Estate market dead? The answer is no. The real estate market is slow in the local residential sector, however there are other sectors of the market which are showing some signs of growth. Income producing properties, some vacation rental properties, high end water front properties and commercial property are showing signs of recovery even in these difficult times. If you are an investor with access to cash or bank financing there are really good deals in this sector of the market. In all sectors of the market, sellers have had to lower prices with buyers locally and from abroad coming to our “depressed economy” looking for a deal. The good news for buyers is that sellers are getting real and willing to take a real look at offers. The offers are few and far between so real offers are being considered

 

 

 

http://freeport.nassauguardian.net/business

Do Not Fall Off The Roof – Roofing Tips | Bedford Hills Homes

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REMODELING: How likely is it that roofing contractors get a jobsite visit from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration?

Mark Paskell: It depends on where the contractor’ [job] is. If he’s working on a main street in a heavily populated area in the Northeast, the chance would be high. This will vary region to region, since OSHA enforcement and educational efforts are predicated on where the injuries and deaths are happening. But there’s national emphasis by OSHA on fall protection. So there may not be a local program for fall hazards, but until Sept. 30, 2015, if you are any type of contractor working on heights of 6 feet or higher, you are the No. 1 priority for OSHA.

RM: How does enforcement work?

MP: Martha Kent, the regional director here in New England, states this: If you are an OSHA compliance health and safety officer — a CHSO — here are your orders. When you go by a residential or commercial jobsite and see people on higher levels, you’re required to stop, observe, and see if there are any obvious fall protection violations or hazards that would be considered an imminent danger situation. If you see that you will immediately pull over and call the OSHA office and begin an audit of that company and that job. If the office can’t send someone, you have to stop and do the initial audit.

RM: Why are residential remodeling and roofing contractors not more aware? That’s why it is important to hire an experienced roofer like RainTech Roofing, Sheet Metal & Gutters. Commercial contractors have borne the cost of compliance because OSHA always visits their sites. So there’s a total lack of knowledge about OSHA in the residential sector. Plus there’s no requirement for OSHA training in residential. A third factor is apathy. Contractors feel that if they haven’t seen OSHA on their jobsites, they don’t need to worry about it.

RM: What happens during that jobsite visit?

MP: The first thing a CHSO will do is start a file. They’ll go by the site several times and will have probably already taken several pictures. When they’re coming onto the site, they know why they’re there.

RM: What if the roofing crew is not working safely according to OSHA rules. How would that be handled?

MP: Say you have five guys on the roof and they’re not tied off. The OSHA inspector will approach the site, present I.D., and ask to speak to the person in charge. The OSHA officer will talk about what he sees that isn’t safe. He’ll focus first on items that are considered “imminent danger,” meaning where someone could get hurt or killed. The guys up there with no harnesses; he will ask them to come down. He’ll talk to people on the jobsite and walk around the site and note anything that’s not up to par for safety standards — like extension cords missing a third prong.

If you’re getting a roofing repair, make sure that they have safety hazards and are professionals to avoid accidents from happening.

http://www.remodeling.hw.net

Developing an Audience-Centric Content Strategy | Bedford Hills Realtor

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Google’s on-going quest to make search results more valuable to the user experience requires refining your content strategy so that it is highly relevant to your audience and potential customers beyond identifying obvious keywords around your products and services.

But how do you develop a solid audience-centric content strategy for the digital age?

Persona Analysis

It begins with a well-defined persona analysis plan…When Find and Convert engages a new client, we do the prerequisite discovery that any respectable digital marketing agency delivers. Before we dive into keyword research though, we begin with an in-depth collaborative persona analysis process to discover direct and indirect audiences that actually live in our client’s digital journey. The objective is to discover highly relevant yet sometimes indirect keywords that are significant to the way in which our clients solve their customer’s needs, and then integrate them into the content across digital assets.

Often times, our clients have a clear perception of their buyers. The objective of the persona analysis is to look beyond the most obvious audiences and discover related verticals that are relevant to the buying journey.  And to keep the discovery smooth and focused, we unveil the process in steps.

via findandconvert.com

Will the new Twitter features affect real estate? | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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At a recent invite-only developer meeting, Twitter announced several updates to their “Cards” feature. Judging at the surface of where this appears to be heading, there may be an interesting offering for folks interesting in sharing and consuming real estate content.

What are Twitter Cards?

In short, Cards offer the ability to expand the content of a particular tweet. Usually, this expansion includes rich content such as photos, videos, articles, and music.

Twitter has just released three new types of Cards:

App – will show information about an app (name, price, rating, etc…)

Product – will show an item’s picture and description, maybe even price

via inman.com

Bedford Hills Sales Up 11% | Median Price Up 207% | RobReportBlog

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Bedford Hills NY Real Estate ReportRobReportBlog20136 months ending 4/25201210Sales9$1,310,000.00median sold price$426,000.00$282,000.00low sold price$275,000.00$3,995,000.00high sold price$3,550,000.004162average size2958$347.00235$309.00226ave days on market163$1,614,450.00average sold price$810,555.0091.54%ave sold to ask90.69%
via trulia.com

Housing Rebound in U.S. Hampered by Success as Costs Soar | Bedford Hills NY Homes

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Suppliers of glass, drywall and wood products, who reduced output during the slump, are testing the vigor of the rebound by boosting prices before committing to restore capacity. Builders, including Lennar Corp. (LEN), Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL) and KB Home, are asking homebuyers for more money as a result or are delaying sales, posing a temporary hurdle for the industry that has become one of the pillars of the economic expansion.

Building-material manufacturers “are raising prices dramatically, and once they’re convinced that these prices are going to stick, they’ll start reinvesting in those plants,” helping ease supply constraints, said John Burns, chairman of Irvine, California-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting, which provides research to developers, construction-product manufacturers and investors. “Those can take a year to get up and running.”

In a sign demand remains strong, a report yesterday showed sales of new houses advanced in March, capping the best quarter for the industry since 2008. Purchases of new single-family properties climbed 1.5 percent to a 417,000 annual pace, the Commerce Department said.

via bloomberg.com

Credit proves a hurdle for potential homebuyers | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

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Spring has already proven to be a success for the housing industry. In its latest report, CoreLogic noted that there are a number of factors that could help strengthen the housing sector even more, but homebuyers are still facing major obstacles standing between themselves and homeownership. 

Right now, sellers are facing the challenge of owning enough equity in their existing home to have a strong enough downpayment on a home in a competitive sellers’ market. Not only that, they need to have a qualifying credit profile in a tight lending industry.

Luckily, many of those markets that were hit the hardest have had strong price improvements in 2012, removing some of the insufficient equity constraint. With more equity in their hands, owners are putting their homes up for sale and contributing to a tight housing inventory, CoreLogic writes, then transitioning into the buyer role once their home has sold. 

Not only that, increasing equity is reviving trade-up buyer demand, creating a healthy housing cycle. 

Coinciding with this newfound equity is increased investor activity, which is expecting to continue driving demand throughout the year.

It is anticipated that the first-time homebuyer will also make a stronger appearance in the near future. Today’s household formation has many potential first-time buyers running to rentals, but CoreLogic notes that is part of the cycle. 

The report’s author, Mark Fleming, writes, “As new renter-households are formed, rental prices are bid up, making the prospect of owning more attractive to existing renters.”

via housingwire.com

The gap between large and small homebuilders widens | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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The 14% increase in land values during the first three quarters of 2012 was four times greater than the rise in house prices, Capital Economics said in a new report.

The report calls the rising cost and reduced availability of building materials, labor and land “thorns in the side of the homebuilding recovery.” But for some homebuilders, this has widened the gap of success between large and small homebuilders. 

In its 2012 annual report, Toll Brothers ($30.91 0.61%) writes, “Our financial strength gives us a competitive advantage over the small and mid-sized private builders in our luxury niche whose access to capital and land remains constrained.”

Despite plenty of anecdotal evidence that many of the lots, which are ready for building, are generally far away from city centers, according to Capital Economics, Toll Brothers says its philosophy has always been to acquire exceptionally located sites. 

In its annual report, Toll Brothers writes, “In contrast to the just-in-time model of some land-light builders, we often take this land through approvals while we have it under option and then improve it.” This helps increase the company’s profit margins and enables it to position the company for the future.

Another large homebuilder, Lennar Corporation ($38.17 0.94%), has dedicated a large amount of its spending toward purchasing land. 

“Against this backdrop of recovery in the housing market, we have continued to be a very active land purchaser spending almost $500 million on land in the first quarter,” said Start Miller, CEO of Lennar Corp. in the builders’ first-quarter report.

He added, “We are well positioned for 2013 and 2014 so our land focus is now primarily on homesites for 2015 and beyond.”

Publicly traded homebuilder Meritage Homes  ($41.56 1.79%) has also been actively buying land since 2009.

Meritage Homes’ CEO wrote in the company’s 2012 annual report, “Based on our better-than-anticipated growth in 2012 and expectations for this recovery to continue for several years, we invested approximately $480 million in land and development during 2012.’

The company ended the year with almost 21,000 lots, representing a five-year supply based on its trailing twelve months’ closings, according to its annual report.

The financial strength of these large homebuilders continues to give them a competitive advantage against smaller builders.

“We believe our land positioning strategies have helped to pave the way for achieving future growth and profitability,” said Toll Brothers, who spent $106 million on land development in 2012.

“The opportunity to purchase substantially finished lots in desired locations is becoming increasingly more limited and competitive,” the builder said. “As a result, we are spending more dollars on land development as we are purchasing more undeveloped land and partially finished lots than in recent year.”

mhopkins@housingwire.com

via housingwire.com