According to The Wall Street Journal, China recently purchased a record amount of U.S. government agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, even as it sold Treasurys. The WSJ has more:
“There is no evidence that Chinese investors are losing confidence in the U.S. market,” said Ian Lyngen, a senior government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group LLC. “In fact the notion that they are buying dips [in bond prices] is longer-term constructive” for the U.S.
Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates changing little for the week amid the federal debt impasse in Washington, D.C. and a light week of economic data releases.
News Facts
Average commitment rates should be reported along with average fees and points to reflect the total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage. Visit the following links for the Regional and National Mortgage Rate Details and Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.
Quotes Attributed to Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist, Freddie Mac.
“Mortgage rates were little changed amid the federal debt impasse in Washington, D.C. and a light week of economic data releases. Of the few releases, the private sector added an estimated 166,000 jobs in September, which were fewer than the market consensus and followed a downward revision of 17,000 workers in August, according to the ADP Research Institute. The Institute for Supply Management reported a greater slowing in growth in the nonmanufacturing industry in September than the market consensus forecast.”
Freddie Mac was established by Congress in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the nation’s residential mortgage markets. Freddie Mac supports communities across the nation by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Today Freddie Mac is making home possible for one in four home borrowers and is one of the largest sources of financing for multifamily housing. For more information please visit www.FreddieMac.com and Twitter: @FreddieMac.
Will the long-awaited sellers’ market be extraordinarily short-lived? An email survey of big market agents found that the pendulum is shifting in favor of buyers.
An August survey of 522 Redfin agents found that fewer believe this to be a good time to sell than in the second quarter and more than half, 55 percent, said it is “a good time to buy,” up from 46% in the first quarter.
Inventory shortages (87%) and bidding wars (79%) remain the biggest challenges for buyers, according to the agent survey. Some 62% of agents say that sellers have unrealistic expectations about the value of their home and 30% say that sellers are having difficulties getting their home to appraise for the contract purchase amount.
Markets are cooling down. Some 56% of agents believe the market over the last three months has become less competitive. Only 22% believe it has become more competitive.
Price expectations are changing dramatically. Most (68%) expect price gains in the coming months but fewer than in the in the first quarter (97%). Only five percent expect home prices to “rise a lot,” down from 44% in the first quarter.
“At the end of this summer, you could smell the rubber on the road from buyers hitting the breaks,” said Redfin San Diego agent Sara Fischer. “The cutthroat competition and frenzied demand has relaxed considerably.”
Respondents spanned 22 metropolitan markets in the U.S.: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Orange County, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/10/are-sellers-losing-control/
The size of your basement is a large factor. Some homeowners only remodel part of their basements to curb total remodeling costs. Any project with a large square footage will be more expensive as it means more materials and longer construction time. Continue Reading
For a basement remodel, you’ll have to consider walls, ceilings, flooring, lighting, and insulation. If you’re adding a bathroom, then you’ll deal with installing countertops, cabinets, a toilet and even a shower or bathtub. All of these options mean various price ranges, depending on the types of materials selected. It’s important to figure out your budget and then choose the most important aspects to focus on for the remodel.
Your basement will likely need to be fitted with additional wires to support more lights and electronics. You will need to hire a licensed electrician if you plan to install additional overhead light fixtures, outlets and other components that require additional wiring.
If you’re adding a bathroom, then you’ll need to hire a licensed plumber to install the necessary elements. The more you decide to install in your bathroom, the higher the bathroom remodeling costs will be. Adding a shower or bathtub might be necessary if you plan to use the basement as a guest suite. Otherwise a half bath may be perfect if the basement is used as a living or family room space.
Adding a bedroom or another living space to your home might cost you a lot by the end, but you will see a return on your investment when you go to resell your home. Having another room adds value to the house, which means someone will pay more for your home when it comes time to put it on the market.
When it comes to purchasing a new home, school districts play a significant factor in the final decision. In light of this, a new study revealed that home prices escalated significantly in highly favored school zones. Per Redfin Blog:
Everyone assumes that better school districts tend to have bigger homes, higher quality homes, larger lots, or a more prime location (views, quiet streets, etc). We’ve debunked that assumption. When accounting for size, on average, people pay $50 more per square foot for homes in top-ranked school zones compared with homes served by average-ranked schools. This means that the price differences for similar homes located near each other but served by different schools can range from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
![10 examples roi social media 10 Examples of Social Media ROI [Infographic]](http://cdn.pamorama.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/10-examples-roi-social-media.jpg "10 Examples of Social Media ROI [Infographic]")
The immediacy and visibility offered by social media marketing has convinced most business owners that it’s worth their time and effort, but calculating its effectiveness is another story. Best practices for measurement are still evolving, and even though brands are committing an increasing percentage of their budgets to social channels, many are still skeptical about its value and return on investment (ROI). What’s a marketer to do?
In the past, most marketing involved one-to-one communication. Traveling salespeople knew their audience well, and went door-to-door to deliver custom personal messages about their products to willing buyers. Think of Avon, which employed women dubbed “Avon Ladies” to sell cosmetics and skin care products beginning in 1886.
This evolved into attracting an audience via a one-to-many approach, with brands using tools like survey responses, subscription data, and Nielsen scores before delivering advertising via traditional media. In this scenario, marketers are fairly certain about who they are talking to and use trackable elements such as coupon codes and phone numbers to quantify results. Both of these paradigms make ROI fairly easy to compute: Just divide returns by the initial investment and calculate a percentage: $100,000 net profit ÷ $400,000 invested = 25% ROI.
Easy, right?
Enter social media. Brand marketers are using many approaches in an effort to be part of the conversation, and are leveraging multiple social channels to do so. These programs are far more complex than the one-to-one and one-to-many paradigms. It’s very easy to just start measuring your ROI by counting how many Twitter followers and Facebook friends you have. Or you could be a bit more advanced and measure retweets and likes. Although these are important components to track, a goal-based approach to ROI will help you better understand your results — your method of measurement must dovetail with the campaign goals you defined before embarking on a social media marketing program.
The infographic below from Psoshul illustrates how 10 companies successfully used social media marketing initiatives and measured their effectiveness.
Five Republican candidates for Westchester Board of Legislators have won write-in primaries that will put their names on the Independence line on the general election ballot.
The Independence Party froze Republicans out of the line in contested races this year and nine were able to challenge the endorsed candidates, all Democrats, through the write-in process called opportunity to ballot. The line could help Republicans in close races.
“This is a very gratifying victory for my campaign but more important, it is a victory for the principles of fair and honest elections,” said Legislator Sheila Marcotte, who won her write-in challenge in District 10. “The true spirit of the Independence Party has been affirmed by the rank and file members. The huge margin of victory in this race is a clear rebuke to the back room-dealing and patronage-begging that the Independence Party bosses have engaged in.”
Here are unofficial results from the Westchester Board of Elections:
District 1 (Peekskill, Buchanan, Yorktown)
Duane Jackson, D, 113
John Testa*, R, 127
District 2 (northeast Westchester)
Peter Harckham*, D, 164
Andrea Rendo, R, 115
District 5 (White Plains, Scarsdale, Harrison)
Benjamin Boykin, D, 33
Miriam Levitt Flisser, R, 16
District 6 (Harrison, Rye Brook, Port Chester)
Mark Jaffe, D, 64
David Gelfarb*, R, 19
John Verni, R (in District 7), 1
District 7 (Mamaroneck, Rye, Larchmont, Harrison, New Rochelle)
Catherine Parker, D, 34
Thomas Murphy, D, 4
John Verni, R, 61
(Verni also won a Green Party write-in primary with 5 votes to Parker’s 1 vote)
District 9 (Cortlandt, Croton, Ossining, Briarcliff, Peekskill)
Catherine Borgia*, D, 107
Peter Tripodi IV, R, 78
District 10 (Eastchester, Tuckahoe, New Rochelle)
Mary Jo Jacobs, D, 47
Sheila Marcotte*, R, 118
District 11 (Pelham town, New Rochelle)
Stavros Pantelis, D, 23
James Maisano*, R, 103
District 14 (Yonkers, Mount Vernon)
Rachelle ‘Rocky’ Richard, D, 33
Bernice Spreckman*, R, 58
http://northernwestchester.lohudblogs.com/2013/09/27
It took an epic back-and-forth with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but Jared Kushner finally got approval for his Puck Building penthouse project in late 2011. Since then details of the creatively named Puck Penthouses have been scant—about design, pricing, potential buyers, or anything else—and the bare-bones teaser site doesn’t help. Then yesterday the Post reported that Leonardo DiCaprio had been one of the first to scope out the units, which are going to be priced above $20 million a pop whenever they hit the market. And now a tipster has sent us this Knight Frank listing with the first three interior glimpses of the six 3-4BR apartments, which will range from 4,895 to 7,000 square feet and have “soaring barrel vault brick ceilings, cast-iron columns, and oversize windows.” Above, a living room, dining room and terrace.
The following is an excerpt from The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (Process Media, 2010). Homesteading from their bungalow two blocks off of Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, Coyne and Knutzen offer up scores of tips and step-by-step projects for sustainable, self-reliant living in a bustling metropolis. With more and more urbanites looking to become farmers and gardeners, Coyne and Knutzen’s fantastic guidebook couldn’t be timelier, and the duo’s lighthearted, thrifty approach to self-sufficiency shows there is greater power and happiness in creating than in spending. This excerpt is from Chapter 2, “Essential Projects.”
These containers make it easy to grow vegetables in pots. They are ideal for apartment gardening, but are so useful that everyone should consider using them to maximize their growing space.
The problem with growing food in pots is that pots dry out quickly and it’s all too easy to forget to water. Irregular watering causes all sorts of problems for sensitive fruits and vegetables. Container gardening is also water-intensive. During a heat wave it may mean visiting the plants with the watering can two or even three times every day — obviously not a practical scheme for someone who works away from home, or someone with any kind of life at all.
An elegant solution exists in the form of self-watering containers. Rather than having a hole in the bottom of the pot, a self-watering container (SWC) has a reservoir of water at the bottom, and water leaches upward into the soil by various mechanisms, keeping it constantly moist. The top of the pot is covered with a layer of plastic that discourages evaporation. Depending on how deep the water reservoir is, it’s possible to go about a week between fill-ups. This arrangement, combined with the plastic layer, prevents both over-watering and under-watering that can occur with conventional pots. In other words, it takes the guesswork and anxiety out of watering.
Kelly says: I’m going to tell you right now that you can buy yourself a self-watering container at earthbox.com. It’s great to make SWCs with found materials and all, but if these instructions make your eyes cross, or if you just don’t have time, there is no shame in trotting off with your credit card and ordering a couple of these ready-made. They start at about $40.
Erik says: Au contraire, ma petite amie! All it takes is two 5-gallon buckets, a few other easily scavenged items and about an hour’s worth of time. Those Earthboxes are damned expensive and my time is cheap.
A few years back, an Internet hero named Josh Mandel figured out several different techniques for building DIY self-watering containers out of old buckets, soda bottles, storage tubs, etc. His plans are widely disseminated online, and you’ll find links to his instructional PDF files on our website.
Inspired by Mandel’s methods, we started making our own self-watering containers. Each SWC is a little different, because each one, being made of found materials, is an improvisation. We’re going to show you how to make a simple SWC out of two 5-gallon buckets. (See several of these 5-gallon self-watering containers in use on a Chicago rooftop garden.) After you have the basic principles down, improvising future containers on your own out of whatever you have on hand should be easy.
The 5-gallon size described is good for one big plant. Try a basil plant in it, especially if you like pesto. Basil thrives with the steady moisture, as does Italian parsley, so both herbs grow huge in SWCs. Or plant a tomato, but be sure it is a small tomato. Look for types designated “patio” or “basket” tomatoes. These are bred to perform well in tight conditions. A 5-gallon container may seem big, but tomatoes have some of the deepest roots of all vegetables. If you plant an ordinary tomato in a SWC, its roots may find their way into the reservoir, and then it would become waterlogged.
For your next project, we recommend that you visit Josh Mandel’s PDFs for instructions on how to construct a larger, slightly more complex container out of 8- to 10-gallon storage tubs. That size SWC is good for growing a little salad garden, a stand of greens, a patch of strawberries or even a blueberry bush.
It all starts with providing a water reservoir at the bottom of your container. You can do this either by nesting two containers together (the top one holds soil, the bottom one water), or by making some kind of divider that sits toward the bottom of a single container and holds the soil above the reservoir. However you construct it, the barrier between the soil and water should be full of small holes for ventilation.
The water is pulled up from the reservoir and into the soil by means of something called a wicking chamber. This can be a perforated tube, a basket, a cup or anything full of holes that links the soil to the water. The soil in the chamber(s) becomes saturated, and it feeds moisture to the rest of the soil.
The reservoir is refilled by means of a pipe that passes through the soil compartment down to the very bottom of the container.
The last essential element is a hole drilled into the side of the container at the highest point of the reservoir. This is an overflow hole that prevents you from oversaturating your plants.
Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/print.aspx?id={4FC5844B-9152-4A0F-864E-CAAD12330AD3}#ixzz2fFeJzSLw
What’s the secret to a successful kitchen remodel? Knowing what mistakes to avoid! Almost everyone who has been through a remodel has a war story to share about what they’d do differently. Whether it’s the neighbor’s never-ending remodel, or the friend of a friend whose contractor couldn’t get along with the architect, keep your dream kitchen from becoming a nightmare by protecting yourself from these common first-timer mistakes.