The Chappaqua Central School District announced it will have a two-hour delayed start on Tuesday following Monday’s snowstorm.
http://chappaqua.dailyvoice.com/news/chappaqua-schools-will-have-two-hour-delay-tuesday
If you were looking for a triplex apartment in Greenwich Village for under a million dollars, smart money would say you probably wouldn’t find one. But smart money would be wrong because this weird little three-room triplex on East 12th and Broadway exists. Recently renovated and located in a prewar building, the $785,000 unit features a living room on the lower level, a kitchen in the middle, and bedroom with a tiny balcony half a flight above that. It actually looks kind of nice for the price, although the placement of the kitchen is a little odd.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/03/tiny_greenwich_village_triplex_wants_785000.php
Despite a slight improvement in interest rates, mortgage applications and refinancing activity declined in the latest update from the Mortgage Bankers Association. For the week ended January 24, 2014, applications for home loans decreased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.
On an unadjusted basis, mortgage applications plunged 9 percent from the prior week. There have only been a handful of increases over the past nine months as the housing market is starting to return to a more sustainable pace. The Refinance Index and Purchase Index both declined 2 percent from the previous week. Meanwhile, the unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 3 percent compared with the previous week and was 12 percent lower than the same week one year ago.
Overall, the refinance share of mortgage activity accounted for 62 percent of total applications, down from 64 percent a week earlier, which was the highest level in a month. Interest rates have rebounded higher in recent months, but a disappointing jobs report earlier this month could keep rates under control for the near future as the Federal Reserve maintains a loose monetary policy. In December, the U.S. economy added only 74,000 jobs, the smallest monthly gain in three years and a far cry from the 200,000 jobs estimated by economists
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/housing-market-resumes-this-downtrend.html/?ref=YF
The housing crisis didn’t hit all professions equally. In fact, construction workers and builders are the only group who increased their rate of home ownership in the years after the recession, new research shows.
In an analysis of over 70 different professions before and after the recession (2007 to 2009, vs. 2010 to 2012), home ownership among construction workers rose 1 percentage point to 55.4% — the highest growth of any profession — and increased 0.7 percentage points to 65.4% among carpenters during the same period, according to real-estate website Trulia, which mined U.S. Census data for the statistics. Home ownership among electricians remained steady at 75% before and after the recession, the study found.
Construction workers did especially well, given the crash in the property market after 2008, says Susan M. Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at Wharton University of Pennsylvania. “The only sectors that saw growth are groups that have access to bargains and distressed housing and have the expertise to fix them up,” she says. Others are more perplexed by the increase among laborers, especially since they were among the hardest-hit professionals when the housing market crashed in 2008. “It’s certainly ironic,” says Don Frommeyer, president of the National Association of Mortgage Professionals, which represents mortgage brokers. Still, he says, the recovery in the housing market in 2013 should be of some consolation to those who are ready to get back on the property ladder.
The median price of single-family homes sold in King County in 2013 hit $415,000, its highest in five years, as the local housing market’s recovery gained steam.
After tumbling to a seven-year low of $340,000 in 2011, the median rose 7 percent in 2012 and grew 14 percent more last year, according to data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. The median price means that half of homes sold for more, half for less.
But some areas in King County saw bigger spikes than others, according to a Seattle Times analysis of MLS data.
The Jovita/West Hill neighborhood in Auburn led all King County areas with a 29 percent increase in the median price, to $273,000.
Close behind, with 24 percent appreciation: Seattle’s Sodo/Beacon Hill area, also with a below-average median price of $320,000, and Bellevue’s neighborhoods west of Interstate 405, with the county’s highest median price: $1.3 million.
The smallest increases, from 3 to 6 percent, were in Central Seattle, Newcastle/Issaquah and North Seattle.
Despite the strong annual gains for homes, the median sales price for 2013 in nearly all areas of King County was still below its peak in 2007, when the housing bubble burst. But some places are close to recovering all the ground they lost.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2022731968_homesales2013xml.html
Joseph “Joe” Rand has what he says is one “golden rule” to profitability, at least when it comes to expenses: Pay as little as possible, only for what your agents really value, and pay for nothing else — unless they’re wrong.
Rand is managing partner at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty in the New York metro area. Last year, the firm generated about $45 million in revenue, Rand said.
He spoke to a roomful of his colleagues at Real Estate Connect New York City today in a session called “Survival War Room for Brokers.”
“If your business model is aligned with what your agents value, you’ll be just fine. It really depends on you being a good operator and executing on that,” Rand said.
But ”sometimes there’s a disconnect between what agents want and what they should want,” he added.
For instance, his brokerage used to pay for personal assistants for their most successful agents. But then the industry changed and the agents didn’t need those assistants as much, so the firm allowed the agents to spend that money on marketing.
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2014/01/15/the-golden-rule-to-profitability-for-brokers/?utm_source=20140116&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam#sthash.Gw830cZN.dpuf
