Tag Archives: Bedford NY Luxury Homes

HSBC to pay $249 million to end foreclosure probes | Bedford NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

International bank HSBC signed onto an agreement that effectively ends the companies’ review of questionable foreclosure practices.

Rather than using an independent review process already in place, the bank will address the issue through a one-time settlement with impacted homeowners.

The mega bank is joining 12 other servicers that already ended independent foreclosure reviews by opting to solve legacy foreclosure processing claims through a cash settlement.

HSBC alone will pay $249 million in both direct cash payments and foreclosure assistance to borrowers harmed by sloppy or questionable foreclosure practices, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Friday.

Of those funds, $96 million will go to eligible borrowers, while $153 million will cover loan modifications and deficiency judgments.

The Federal Reserve and OCC released similar deals with other major servicers, including Aurora, Bank of America ($11.14 -0.14%), Citibank ($41.66 0.42%), Goldman Sachs ($144.45 3.44%), JPMorgan Chase ($46.46 0.02%), MetLife Bank ($36.31 -0.05%), Morgan Stanley ($22.38 1.63%), PNC ($61.84 -0.17%), Sovereign, SunTrust ($29.14 -0.43%), U.S. Bank ($32.87 0.11%) and Wells Fargo ($34.93 -0.1%).

With HSBC added to the pile of settling firms, 4.2 million borrowers will receive about $3.6 billion in cash to be distributed among them. Another $5.7 billion will be used to offer mortgage assistance.

Federal regulators moved to the one-time settlement approach after finding the foreclosure review process too costly and inefficient.

via housingwire.com

The Importance of Facebook’s Graph Search | Bedford NY Realtor

Leave a reply

I have not exactly been a Facebook fanboy over the years. That may well have changed yesterday with the announcement of Facebook’s Graph Search, which seems to address two of my fundamental concerns with the world’s most popular online site.

First, until yesterday, I saw no compelling reason why people needed to stay at Facebook. We are there because our friends are there. We are there because we can get deals by liking a brand. We are there because it is the state of social networking today. These are not such compelling, defensible and sustainable features that they ensure we will not wander off.

Second, Facebook is a walled garden. It is a closed social network in a universe designed to be open. History has not been kind to closed systems and I have felt Facebook needed to open up or eventually people would just wander away as other amusements, innovations and marketing platforms popped up elsewhere.

The social graph has existed for some time, and it has made Facebook more knowledgeable about who we talk to and what we like than any other organization in history. But until yesterday, the social graph seemed more beneficial to marketers than to people.

Graph Search certainly benefits organizations, but it also has unique, valuable and sustainable advantage to the hundreds of millions of people using Facebook. Unlike what we do at Google, we can find people, places, photos and interests based on who we talk to on Facebook. This seems to me to be a better way to search for many things than the way Google does it.

More than that, Facebook knows more about our relationships today than anyone, while Google knows more about what we are looking for. The latter is valuable, but it seems to me less so than the former.

In yesterday’s announcement, Zuckerburg insisted Graph Search was inwardly focused; that it would not be competing with Google. I think in the short term that is the case, but over time Graph Search will show itself as a competitive threat to Google, LinkedIn, Match.com, Expedia, Amazon.com and anywhere else we go looking for people, leisure activities or information.

If I understand Graph Search right, then it really has no other way to go.

That would explain the partnership with Microsoft Bing.  Bing is often overlooked because it has garnered less than 10 percent of the existing search market. Small as it may seem, it’s enough to redirect more than a billion advertising dollars a year, according to multiple sources, from Google’s cash register into Microsoft’s.

Bing may also be the road out of the Facebook walled garden. Bing, of course, crawls the entire web. Most users find search results to be as good as what they get from Google, but the photos are superb. In mobile apps, Bing is a visually wonderful search platform.

But if Graph Search is just about crawling Facebook, why does it need Bing? My guess is Facebook’s strategy will be to remove the walls of its garden slowly over time and give users results from all the sources on the worldwide web. As the biggest node of all the nodes in the Internet universe, Graph Search is at once extremely useful and valuable; as an open system using Bing to crawl the rest of the web, it will compete with just about everything and everywhere you search today, from Google and LinkedIn to Match.com, to books at Amazon.com and just about everywhere else.

This may not happen soon. It’s only my speculation, but it feels to me the door has finally been left open a crack.

As for me, I’m like just about everyone else that has been talking about this significant slice of news. I just can’t wait to start playing with my Graph Search. I expect I will be using Facebook more, not less, in the coming weeks, months and years.

via forbes.com

2012 Bedford NY sales down 1.5% – Prices down 12.35% | RobReportBlog

Leave a reply

2012 Bedford NY sales down 1.5% – Prices down 12.35% | RobReportBlog

Bedford NY Sales
2012 2011
67Sales681.50%DOWN
$986,000.00Median Price$1,125,000.0012.35%DOWN
$418,500.00Low Price$305,000.00
$4,750,000.00High Price$4,250,000.00
4081Ave. Size3995
$322.00Ave. Price/foot$332.00
198Ave. DOM208
93.42%Ave. Sold/Ask93.52%
$1,356,741.00Ave. Sold Price$1,377,163.00
via trulia.com

Fitch Ratings Calls for Housing Price Correction | Bedford NY Homes

Leave a reply

Home prices are overvalued and price growth is not being driven by fundamentals but by technical factors that could easily change, advised Fitch Ratings Friday.  The ratings service believes national prices are 10 percent overvalued,  but will likely drop by no more than 2 percent due to inflation. Low prevailing mortgage rates, the limited supply of existing homes for sale (either due to the few foreclosure completions or the number of underwater borrowers who cannot sell), and the anemic levels of new home construction are facilitating affordability and feeding demand.  They are also offsetting weak fundamentals like unemployment, low wage growth, Fitch said in a special report. In addition, Fitch stated it believes price movement is “highly dependent on the pace of distressed sales and liquidations.”  For example, states such as Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia have been able to dispose of their distressed inventory quickly and have also seen “both steeper drops and quicker stabilization,” while states with long foreclosure timelines-New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut-may see price declines. In order to determine sustainability, Fitch conducted an analysis using its Sustainable Home Price (SHP) model. The ratings agency found 22 metros out of 41 are currently “undervalued” or “sustainable,” while five were categorized as “overvalued” by 5 to 10 percent. In 2010, 23 metro areas were overvalued by 10 to 25 percent. The report highlighted hardest hit metros such as Phoenix, Atlanta, and Riverside, noting they are now beginning to recover and are currently considered “undervalued.”  New York and New Jersey, though, were categorized as overvalued by 10 percent to 15 percent, hindered by their large inventory of distressed properties and long foreclosure timelines, according to Fitch. And, high unemployment could hurt Los Angeles and Union, New Jersey and lead to a roughly 10 percent decline. On a national level, Fitch said price growth “is likely to be muted or even modestly negative in the near-term as liquidation volumes increase and expand supply, particularly in the lengthy judicial states where inventory has been off the market.” Fitch warned “short-term price movements can be misleading when the impact of distressed properties has been withheld from the market.” “Many models place a high value on price momentum, which can skew long-term projections. Another factor differentiating our model from many in the market is that our projections are in real terms as opposed to nominal dollars,” said Stefan Hilts, director of Fitch Ratings.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Americans are Moving More Often | Bedford NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Rising home values, affordable prices, pent up demand and fewer households underwater on there are motivating more American families to move more often. The average home buyer is expected to stay in a home only 13 years, down from a peak of 20 years in 2009.

Based on a long-run calculation that averages mobility tendencies over a number of years, the typical buyer of a single-family home-including first-time buyers as well as move up buyers- can be expected to stay in the home is now approximately 13 years, according to recent article published by the National Association of Home Builders.

The NAHB work updates a previous article that used data from the American Housing Survey (funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and conducted in odd-numbered years by the Census Bureau) through 2007. The new study incorporates AHS data through 2011.

The mobility tendencies observed in the 2011 data imply that the expected length of stay in an owner-occupied, single-family home would be about 16 years (the time it would take half of single-family buyers to move out). However, 2011 is likely to be an atypical year, so the article repeats the analysis using mobility tendencies observable in earlier years, with results as shown in the figure below.

If a single estimate is needed for how long buyers who move in today or in the near future can be expected to remain in their homes, the article recommends 13 years, based on the rounded average across all data points.

The article also shows that, over the 1987-2011 period, the expected length of stay in a single-family home has been consistently longer for trade-up buyers than for first-time buyers. Averaged over those years, the expected length of stay in a single-family home is about 11 and a half years for first-time buyers, compared to 15 years for buyers who have owned a home before.

The National Association of Realtors reported that the average tenure is still nine years in its recent 2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, up from six years before the housing crash in 2007, but the average buyers expectation is to live in theuir new home 15 years.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Foreclosures for sale: deals disappear on foreclosures for sale | Bedford NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

In four-county Metro Orlando, a RealtyTrac snapshot of more than 1,300 foreclosure sales in July and August revealed an average discount of 4 percent below the homes’ market value — only slightly more than what banks are shaving off repossessed homes nationwide.

“This is likely the result of home prices stabilizing and even increasing in many markets, along with a limited supply of bank-owned properties, giving the edge to the sellers,” said Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac vice president. “Unlike an individual homeowner selling his or her home, the banks are not emotionally attached to these properties or to a certain value that they think the properties are worth.”

The local price-slashing varies widely by lender and location, however.

Some Metro Orlando locales reported deep discounts in bank-owned homes — from 15 percent to 29 percent below market value, according to RealyTrac’s July-August sample. Those areas, which are disparate geographically and in terms of income levels, include:

Orlando’s 32806 ZIP code, an eclectic area between downtown and Conway.

Lady Lake, a haven for retirees in Lake County.

Orlando’s 32807 ZIP, with the working-class subdivisions of Azalea Park.

Maitland, a city of middle-class and lakefront neighborhoods.

Orange County’s 32818 ZIP code, which includes parts of the historically low-income Pine Hills area.

Discounts on bank-owned homes are important not only to deal hunters but also to other homeowners. Orlando’s housing market is so thin on for-sale listings that, although it could absorb more foreclosed homes without crippling property values, the market’s recovery could slow if banks slash prices to move their distress sales faster. And getting rid of properties quickly is attractive to lenders trying to minimize legal costs, homeowner-association dues, property taxes, repair bills and other fees.

Orlando real-estate broker Dean Asher, president of the statewide industry group Florida Realtors, said the market is moving in a direction that is conducive to investment groups armed with cash buying up multiple residential properties directly from large lenders. Homebuyers dependent on financing, he added, are having a difficult time competing for the bargains.

“Years ago, we would have gotten these [foreclosures] off the books and cleaned up” the market, Asher said. “We’re moving forward, but [banks,] they’ve been holding on to these assets, and as they’re tightening the discount, they are discouraging ordinary buyers.”

According to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, the much-larger gap between prices paid for bank-owned homes and those paid in “normal” home sales has also been shrinking. For example, in the Realtors’ core Orlando market, the single-family homes sold by lenders had a median price of $90,000 — or 42 percent less than November’s conventional sales, which had a midpoint price of $155,048. A year earlier, in November 2011, the gap had been 46 percent.

via articles.orlandosentinel.com

Latest from the NYC market | Bedford NY Realtor

Leave a reply

from the top:

We have just released the “Elliman Report: Manhattan Sales 4Q 2012,” the leading resource on the state of the Manhattan co-op and condo market.  Our market reports are produced in conjunction with Miller Samuel to provide you and your clients with the most comprehensive and neutral market insight available.

Manhattan closed out 2012 with the most fourth quarter sales in 25 years and the lowest level of inventory in more than a decade. Tax planning in advance of the “fiscal cliff,” rising rents, an improving regional economy and record low mortgage rates were some of the key reasons for increased sales in the quarter. Although housing prices remained stable through the year, the shortage of inventory could bring pressure to them in the new year.  We continue to be impressed with the depth and strength of the market and look forward to an active 2013.

via trulia.com