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Bedford Hills NY

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

HUD homes add to inventory-starved market | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Any homebuyer on the market right now will tell you the crowd of buyers and multiple offers are creating a challenge.

Those in search of distressed homes owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are not immune to this supply-and-demand situation. In fact, recently one HUD home in San Diego attracted 100 offers within 10 days. 

“In this market, because it’s so competitive we’re seeing buyers just happy to get a house. They are being less selective on location and condition,” said Whissel, broker/owner of Whissel Realty. 

But in its latest news report, RealtyTrac reported that an uptick in homes owned by HUD may create opportunities for patient buyers.

Experts project that over the next two years, as lenders steadily work through a backlog of foreclosures delayed by foreclosure-processing reviews, the supply of these HUD homes will increase significantly. 

via housingwire.com

Nearly Half of Homeowners Don’t Know Their Flood Risk | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Despite extensive media coverage of the widespread, multistate flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy last fall and Hurricane Irene in the summer of 2011, 1 in 5 homeowners is still surprised to learn that home insurance does not cover flooding, according to a Bankrate nationwide survey as part of the April Financial Security Index.

The survey found that 18 percent of consumers didn’t know that a standard homeowners policy specifically excludes flood-related damage, while 81 percent were aware of the need to purchase a separate flood insurance policy from the federal National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, to guard against flood loss.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which administers the NFIP, generally classifies properties as either at high risk or moderate-to-low risk of flooding. When consumers were asked if they knew for sure which category applies to their home, just more than half, or 51 percent, said “yes,” while 43 percent said “no.”

Bankrate’s survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International and involved landline and cellphone interviews from April 4-7 with a nationally representative sample of 1,003 adults in the continental United States. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

“I was very happy that 4 out of 5 survey respondents understood that standard homeowners insurance does not cover flood,” he says. “This number is a much higher awareness level than we’ve seen in the past.”

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Permit check critical when buying home | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

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Most houses are inspected by a home inspector before they’re sold. However, home inspectors usually don’t inspect the permit record on a house. To be sure you have the complete picture, it’s wise to go to the local planning department and check the permit history on the home you’re buying before your inspection contingency is due.

Why is this important? Some planning departments require that any open or expired permits that haven’t received final approval must be completed before a new permit on the property will be issued. In one case, a seller took out a permit to replace the roof. He never had the job done and the permit expired.

The new owners applied for a permit and were denied. They needed to pay to reopen the roof permit and complete the job before they could obtain a permit to do additional work on the house. This could add a considerable cost to your improvement budget.

You might be able to file a claim against the seller, depending on the circumstances. However, he may not have been aware of the expired permit if a previous seller took out the permit and your seller didn’t check the permit record when he purchased the property.

via inman.com

Best Practices for Your Real Estate Web Site Home Page | Bedford Hills NY Realtor

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Your Web site should be working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, capturing leads and marketing your brand. Your site should be helping consumers search for homes, find local market data, and get answers to some of their burning questions. And all of this can be handled on your Web site’s home page. Yes, really.

I’ve come up with a few best practices to consider for the home page of your real estate Web site, which will provide potential clients with a better overall online experience while boosting your credibility as a go-to resource in your market.

1. A full IDX search that is front and center

Make no mistake, consumers come to your Web site to search for listings. And they want to search all the listings — not just your or your office’s listings. Give them a full IDX search or don’t bother having a Web site. Keep your search obvious, as it should be the first thing the consumer sees on your home page. Offering a school district search, short sale and foreclosure search, and other advanced search filters would be nice as well.

2. Calls to action and contact forms

Say it with me: “The purpose of your Web site is to get more business.” If not, then why bother? Use calls to action to ask the consumer to take action on a specific item. Asking a Web visitor to “click here to view” some information will typically garner more clicks then just embedding the link in your text. Be sure to have contact forms (in addition to displaying your contact information) to entice visitors further. Ask them to make an appointment, get more information, sign up for local market data, get a CMA, and so on. These forms cannot be ignored – this is how a Web site viewer becomes a lead.

3. Clear and uncluttered layout (and nothing set to automatically play, please)

Always focus on the visitor experience when thinking about your home page design and layout. Be clear with your purpose and don’t overwhelm them with words. Remember that white space is okay. Avoid heavy code, as this will affect your page’s load times. Please (pretty please) do not have something automatically play when visitors land on your home page, such as music, a video, or a voice recording — you are outing the consumer when you do this and you’re likely to have them frantically searching for the mute button, or, worse, quickly bouncing from your site.

4. Fresh and useful content

Content is your not-so-secret weapon. The good news is, even though we know how important content is, most real estate professionals still are not providing fresh and useful information on their Web sites. What is useful content? Try to keep a local flair to a large part of what you post. Focus on the neighborhoods you work in (or want to work in) often. Talk about the local market statistics or events around town, spotlight a business, try a “man on the street” interview, or just showcase a subdivision or a section of a neighborhood. Nonlocalized content can be anything from real estate news to DIY projects and from FAQs to financing information. A mix of text, photos, and videos is ideal. Need ideas or fresh content that you don’t have to write or record? Check out HouseLogic from NAR at members.houselogic.com for free and shareable content. When in doubt, just ask. I recently had an agent call Zillow to see about reposting an article from the Zillow blog – they were cool with it provided she gave credit to the author and a link back. (Video screenshot courtesy of Stephanie Crawford, a REALTOR® in Nashville, Tenn. – www.NestingInNashville.com)

5. Add links to your content

Use links on your home page to provide the visitor with a deeper dive into your site. For your Web site to have value, set up your home page as the portal that allows users to easily move through to the internal pages of your site. This can be accomplished in two ways – have clear menus with obvious navigation and add in links to your existing home page content.

6. Use the video stick

These days, we prefer to watch our Internet rather than read it. Look at this shift as an opportunity. I know that many of you have already ventured into video by highlighting your listings and your community or maybe even creating a profile video. Embedded video or video that will play on the page is a big win right now. As video continues to rise in popularity, adding an embedded video or playlist is a great way to increase both traffic and the time visitors spend on a page as well as to build rapport with visitors. Videos make your home page stickier by keeping the visitors engaged for longer periods of time. If you have the right search engine optimization behind your videos, you can increase traffic to your site as well.

7. Social media HAS to be part of your Web strategy

By this, I mean more than just linking to your Facebook business page and LinkedIn profile. In fact, you might be better off downplaying those profiles so you don’t lose visitors to the social media suck. “Share this” buttons or a similar solution should be on all of your content pages, if possible, and woven throughout your site in a meaningful way. “Share this” is simple to set up and allows users to share your content on their network of choice. Use social media to drive traffic to your Web site – share your own content when you have a new post or page or if you just want to draw attention to a page on your site.

8. A word on SEO (or several words)…

Stop overthinking search engine optimization. Try to focus on your content above all else, and make a great experience for the consumer. I know that you have been taught that keywords and on-page SEO are important to a good search ranking – and they are, to a point. But don’t be keyword silly and pack your home page with the little gems. On-page SEO will only take you so far. If your site stinks, you might get the traffic from the on-page SEO, but you will lose the lead. For those who are link crammers … the same goes for you! If the experience stinks, you won’t get the business anyway.

So let’s review our best practices for your real estate Web site home page:

  1. Have a full IDX search, front and center
  2. Use calls to action and contact forms
  3. Be sure your design is clear and uncluttered
  4. Create or repurpose fresh and useful content
  5. Use links to drive them deeper
  6. Try the video stick
  7. Use social media to share and drive traffic
  8. Don’t overthink search engine optimization

Last but not least, remember, experience matters. Try to create a fantastic experience for your Web site visitor. There are lots of tricks to drive people to your site, but it’s another thing altogether to keep them there (and hopefully coming back). Don’t wait — begin optimizing your home page and get your Web site working for you today!

External Links: 

via realtormag.realtor.org