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Bedford Hills NY

Case-Shiller Downplays the Doubters | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

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Weak prices in a number of late fall markets as evident in NAR’s latest pending sales index has been causing concern in the real estate circles, but Case-Shiller, the final word on prices, downplayed the doubters today.

Through November 2012, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed home prices rose 4.5 percent for the 10-City Composite and 5.5 percent for the 20-City Composite.

Year-over-year prices rose in 19 of the 20 cities and fell in New York. In 19 cities prices rose faster in the 12 months to November than in the 12 months to October; Cleveland prices rose at the same pace in both time periods. Phoenix led with the fastest price rise – up 22.8 percent in 12 months as it posted its seventh consecutive month of double-digit annual returns.

“The November monthly figures were stronger than October, with 10 cities seeing rising prices versus seven the month before.” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

“Phoenix and San Francisco were both up 1.4 percent in November followed by Minneapolis up 1.0%. On the down side, Chicago was again amongst the weakest with a drop of 1.3 percent for November.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Homebuilder stocks outperform in January | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Homebuilder stocks continued to outperform last week with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods reporting that homebuilder stocks jumped 4.1% for the week ending Jan. 25.

That is up from the S&P 500’s 1.1% increase in the same week and the S&P 500 Financial Index’s 1.3% jump, KBW said.

“Building products companies and mortgage insurers were strong, while non-agency REITs and mortgage servicers were weak,” KBW noted when comparing builders to other parts of the housing industry.

Homebuilder stocks are up 10.9% month-to-date, compared to only a 5.3% increase for the S&P 500 and a 6% increase for the S&P 500 Financials Index.

“In 2012, homebuilder stocks were up 122.8% vs. +13.4% for the S&P 500 and +26.3% for the S&P Financials Index,” KBW analysts said. “Historically, homebuilders have outperformed the S&P 500 in January by 3.5-6.0%.”

via housingwire.com

Warren Group: Massachusetts housing market as ‘turned the corner’ | Bedford Hills Realtor

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In another sign that the housing market may be on the mend, the median sale price of single-family homes in Massachusetts rose more than 12 percent in December to $300,000, the first time since August that median home prices have broken the $300,000 mark, the Warren Group said Thursday.

Looking at the entire year, the Warren Group added that single-family home sales in Massachusetts rose 18 percent in 2012, marking 12 consecutive months of year-over-year sales gains and the best year on record since 2006.

“I would characterize 2012 as the year of robust recovery in the real estate market,” Warren Group chief executive Timothy M. Warren Jr. said in a statement. “It is clear we have turned the corner and are gaining ground rapidly. I contrast the 18 percent gain last year with the decline of 6 percent in 2011.”

As for condo sales in December, they rose 5.4 percent to 1,402 units. The median condo price in December rose 8 percent to $275,000, the Warren Group said.

 

For 2012, condo sales were up more than 25 percent to 19,061 units.

The Massachusetts Association of Realtors issued a separate monthly report Thursday on the local housing market. The association uses a slightly different method to track real estate activity than the Warren Group does.

According to the association’s press release, 3,737 detached single-family homes sold in December, a 13 percent increase from the previous December. December 2012 was the 18th straight month of year-over-year increases.

The median selling price for single-family home in December was $303,500, which was up 10.4 percent from the price in December 2011.

In the Bay State, there were 1,434 condominiums sold this December, a 14.2 percent increase from the same time last year.

The median selling price for condominium in December was $282,750, which was up 8.7 percent from December 2011.

“December capped off a very active year in 2012 as the real estate market in Massachusetts made significant progress towards recovery,” association president Kimberly Allard-Moccia said in a statement. “With the ‘fiscal cliff’ averted for now and pending activity remaining strong, we anticipate a healthy start to 2013.”

Allard-Moccia suggested that there are some concerns about the short supply of homes on the market.

“2012 was the type of year the market needed to help it eventually recover,” said Allard-Moccia. “With inventory continuing to go down, we’re at risk for slipping back to where we were. A truly vibrant market has a good selection of homes at all price levels for all types of buyers.”

via bostonglobe.com

 

Shiller Says U.S. Housing Market May Drop Further | Bedford Hills Realtor

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A U.S. housing-market revival may prove illusory and the threat of further weakness remains, said Robert Shiller, a professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values.

“The housing market has been declining for something like six years now, it could go on, that’s my worry,” Shiller told Tom Keene in a Bloomberg Television interview today in Davos, Switzerland. “The short-term indicators are up now, it definitely looks better, but we saw that in 2009.”

The property market has shown signs of recovery and homebuilding has rebounded as low borrowing costs spur buyer demand, bolster prices. Values rose 7.4 percent in November from a year earlier, the ninth straight increase and the biggest gain since May 2006, Irvine, California-based data provider CoreLogic said last week.

“It’s a good housing market in the sense that mortgage rates are very low and prices have come down to normal levels, so yes, it’s a good time to buy if nothing bad happens,” Shiller said. “But it’s also a very bad housing market in that most of the mortgages are being supported by the government, and we have the Fed and this buying program. It’s a very abnormal market. There’s a lot of uncertainty going forward.”

The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 3.38 percent in the week ended Jan. 17 from 3.4 percent, McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac (FMCC) said that day. The average rate dropped to a record 3.31 percent in November. New-home sales in December picked up to a 385,000 annual rate, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of a Commerce Department report tomorrow.

Attending Davos

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities increased an annual 4.3 percent in October, the biggest 12-month advance since May 2010, the group said on Dec. 26. The next report is due on Jan. 29.

Data on Jan. 22 showed sales of U.S. existing homes unexpectedly fell in December. Purchases fell 1 percent to a 4.94 million annual rate last month, the National Association of Realtors said. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey was for a gain to a 5.1 million rate.

Shiller, who spoke while attending the World Economic Forum’s 2013 annual meeting, also said that while global economic conditions are “a little better,” there are still risks to the recovery.

“We’ve been five years in a slow economy, and it could go quite a bit longer,” he said. “We’ve seen gross domestic product growth at sub-normal levels.”

He added, “I think we’re pretty far from irrational exuberance, maybe 50 years 

via bloomberg.com

 

Tips for building trust with luxury international buyers | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Becoming a successful global luxury real estate agent is all about “relationships and reputation,” says The Corcoran Group’s Patricia Cliff, who estimates that 40 percent of her business is international.

Cliff, whose book, “The Art of Selling Luxury Real Estate,” was published this month, attributes her success not to heavy socializing, but to strategic relationships.

A senior vice president at Corcoran, Cliff shared more insight into the topic in a conversation with Corcoran CEO Pamela Liebman during a panel discussion at Real Estate Connect New York City.

Agents are the spark that bring transactions to life, Liebman said. That’s why Corcoran’s new website, launched in November, integrated social media so thoroughly into its design. “Our website has become a hub for online relationships,” she said.

When Cliff travels, looking to establish relationships or maintain the ones she has, she hosts no lavish parties, but instead focuses on cultivating trusted personal relationships. She picks out two to five of the most valuable contacts in a certain place and sets up meetings with them in advance.


Patricia Cliff

Or, if she doesn’t know some influential potential clients in a place, she looks to enter their spheres. For example, when she went looking for high-end clients in Hong Kong, Cliff went to a jeweler to see about buying pearl and diamond earrings in the hope of sparking a relationship with the jeweler. She employed the same strategy with a Rolls-Royce dealer and private bankers.

Cliff said she helped establish her reputation as a valuable expert for potential clients by writing a 28-page booklet describing the ins and outs of doing real estate transaction in New York City, distributing it to clients early on in a relationship. The booklet also made her life easier, she said — she didn’t have to repeat herself with the same detailed explanations of how to navigate the New York City real estate world over and over again.

When hosting a potential client in the U.S., Cliff said, it’s important to cast a “net” around them and provide an attentive, high level of service, in order to prevent other agents or brokers from swooping in to represent them. And try not to leave clients until a contract is signed. If they’re visiting New York City, for example, the excitement of being in the city and the agent’s enthusiasm creates the ideal atmosphere to close the deal, she said.


Pamela Liebman

Liebman said that sometimes agents will say “you won’t see me for a couple of days,” because they have a client coming into town, and their every waking hour will be committed to taking care of their needs and providing the exceptional, top-level service that many luxury real estate buyers and sellers expect and are accustomed to.

But before getting too caught up in their zeal to capture high-end clients — and a big pay day — it’s important that agents know who they’re dealing with. Potential clients may not have accessible assets in U.S. banks, and since 9/11 moving money into the U.S. has become much more difficult, Cliff said.

Banks are beholden to a “Know Your Customer” provision of 2001’s U.S. Patriot Act that requires banks and financial institutions to add measures to restrict funds associated with terrorist financing and money laundering, which can hamstring otherwise promising deals, Cliff said.

In fact, Cliff said, at one point the FBI had placed her under investigation because of a relationship with a former client, though she knew him only through intermediaries.

At the end of the day, Liebman said, agents who want to deal in luxury real estate can do themselves some good by being in New York City, and knowing a little about its architecture, history and the real estate conversations that happen around the world.

via inman.com

 

Fracking for natural gas being powered by it, too | Bedford Hills Realtor

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Advances in hydraulic fracturing technology have powered the American natural gas boom. And now hydraulic fracturing could be increasingly powered by the very fuel it has been so successful in coaxing up from the depths.

Oil- and gas-field companies from Pennsylvania to Texas are experimenting with converting the huge diesel pump engines that propel millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals thousands of feet down well bores to break apart rock or tight sands and release the natural gas trapped inside.

It’s the latest way for drillers to become consumers of the product that they are making broadly available in large amounts — and extremely cheap. Production has increased so much that natural gas has flooded the market, dragging down prices and forcing companies to pull back on their plans to expand drilling while looking for new ways to use gas.

After the conversion, the engines will run on cheaper natural gas, or a blend of diesel and natural gas. That brings down costs and, theoretically, cuts down the sooty exhaust that comes from burning diesel.

“You’re going to see this spreading quite rapidly across the industry,” said Douglas E. Kuntz, president and CEO of Pennsylvania General Energy Co., based in tiny Warren, Pa. “As the technology evolves, you’ll see more companies across the country doing more natural gas fueling of this equipment.”

A number of increasingly cost-conscious oil- and gas-field companies are already using natural gas to run their trucks and drilling rigs. But what makes the conversion of the hydraulic fracturing pump engines to natural gas particularly challenging is the sheer number of engines running at once, and the amount of horsepower necessary to power the pumps.

PGE and contractor Universal Well Services, of Meadville, Pa., are converting a 16-engine pumping unit — called a “frack spread” — so that the engines will accept a blend of 70 percent natural gas and 30 percent diesel. It should be complete by May and is estimated to cost less than a quarter of what it would if it was powered by diesel alone.

Houston-based Apache Corp., one of the nation’s largest independent oil and gas exploration companies, has worked with Halliburton Co., Schlumberger Ltd. and Caterpillar Inc. to develop similar technology.

A 12-engine unit — the first full frack spread that is operating in the field, according to Apache — just completed two Granite Wash wells near Elk City, Okla. Another unit is in the process of being completed.

“Today we’ve said, ‘we’ve seen enough testing.’ We’ve decided this is how we want to frack with all of our fleets and we’re going to start with two permanent conversions,” said Mike Bahorich, Apache’s executive vice president and chief technology officer.

PGE will be able to use field gas, drawn from pipelines that connect to its nearby Marcellus Shale wells in north-central Pennsylvania, and save trips by fuel-hauling trucks. For now at least, Apache will have to truck in compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas to run its new frack spreads, but it hopes to start using the cheaper field gas in the future, Bahorich said.

It also may provide a way for drilling companies to improve their image on environmental issues after sustaining criticism for air quality problems around gas wells and the practice of lacing hydraulic fracturing fluids with chemicals.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls reducing pollution from diesel engines one of the county’s most important air quality challenges. Diesel engines can produce large quantities of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and soot, which can cause lung and heart problems. Soot also plays a significant role in climate change, researchers say.

Saving the truck trips will improve air quality, but the size of the benefit from replacing diesel engines with natural gas is less clear, according to environmental advocates.

That’s because new diesel engines are subject to strict environmental standards and natural gas-powered engines give off only slightly less pollution, said Joe Osborne, legal director of the Pittsburgh-based Group Against Smog and Pollution.

Regardless, the economic benefit appears enormous for an industry that used more than 700 million gallons of diesel domestically in hydraulic fracturing last year, according to Apache estimates.

The cost to convert the engines is far less than the roughly $3.5 million per frack spread that Apache can save if it completes 140 planned wells in a year with the two units, Bahorich said.

For PGE and Universal, the cost of conversion and engineering will be several million dollars, said Roger Willis, Universal’s president. After that, the fuel price savings are eye-popping: A gallon of diesel fuel costs about $3.60, while equivalent amount of the natural gas blend replacement currently costs about 47 cents, Kuntz said.

PGE, which plans to drill 35 to 40 new Marcellus Shale wells in 2013 all with the natural gas-powered frack spread, expects to save 750,000 gallons of diesel a year, or 55 percent of the diesel in its fracking operations.

“Keeping this frack spread busy over the course of a year, you’ll be on the positive side in less than a year,” Kuntz said.

via news.yahoo.com