Tag Archives: Chappaqua Luxury Homes

Mortgage rates average 3.90% | Chappaqua Real Estate

Freddie Mac (OTCQBFMCC) today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate inching lower.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.90 percent with an average 0.5 point for the week ending November 30, 2017, down from last week when it averaged 3.92 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.08 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.30 percent with an average 0.5 point, down from last week when it averaged 3.32 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 3.34 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.32 percent this week with an average 0.3 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.22 percent. A year ago at this time, the 5-year ARM averaged 3.15 percent.

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 link for the Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quote
Attributed to Len Kiefer, Deputy Chief Economist.
“The 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell two basis points to 3.9 percent in this week’s survey, but we closed our survey prior to a surge in long-term interest rates following an upward revision to third quarter U.S. Real GDP growth and comments by Federal Reserve Chair Yellen touting a broad-based economic expansion.

“The market implied probability of a Fed rate hike in December neared 100 percent, helping to drive short term interest rates higher. The 5/1 Hybrid ARM, which is more sensitive to short-term rates than the 30-year fixed mortgage, increased 10 basis points to 3.32 percent in this week’s survey. The spread between the 30-year fixed mortgage and 5/1 Hybrid ARM is just 58 basis points this week, the lowest spread since November of 2012.”

Mortgage rates increase to 3.91% | Chappaqua Real Estate

Freddie Mac (OTCQBFMCC) today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate posting its biggest week-over-week increase since July 2017.

News Facts

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 3.91 percent with an average 0.5 point for the week ending October 12, 2017, up from last week when it averaged 3.85 percent. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.47 percent.
  • 15-year FRM this week averaged 3.21 percent with an average 0.5 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.15 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 2.76 percent.
  • 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.16 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, down from last week when it averaged 3.18 percent. A year ago at this time, the 5-year ARM averaged 2.82 percent.

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 link for the Definitions. Borrowers may still pay closing costs which are not included in the survey.

Quote
Attributed to Sean Becketti, chief economist, Freddie Mac.
“The 30-year mortgage rate increased for a second consecutive week, jumping 6 basis points to 3.91 percent. The 10-year Treasury yield also rose, climbing 4 basis points this week.”

Millennials are buying homes | Chappaqua Real Estate

Low housing inventory continues to increase competition among homebuyers, but that isn’t deterring Millennials, according to the latest Ellie Mae Millennial Tracker report.

Even in some of the most expensive markets, purchase loans among Millennials continued to increase in April. Purchase loans increased to 89% of the market share in April, up from 88% the month before.

And as purchase loans increased, refinances continued to drop. Closed refinance loans fell to 10% of all loans, down from 11% the previous month.

Millennials even accounted for the majority of closed loans in several metropolitan statistical areas including Bardstown, Kentucky, where Millennials made up 73% of closed loans, Hobbs, New Mexico, with 71%, Dalton, Georgia, with 65%, Victoria, Texas, with 63% and Appleton, Wisconsin, with 63%.

Millennials tend to gravitate toward affordable housing markets in the Midwest and Southeast, however, they are also showing a strong presence in some expensive big cities. Over the past three years, the number of Millennials who closed loans increased in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“This new generation of homebuyers is making its presence felt across the country,” said Joe Tyrrell, Ellie Mae executive vice president of corporate strategy. “Since the beginning of 2016, the percentage of Millennials purchasing homes in the Bay Area has actually increased from 16% to 20%.”

The New York area saw an increase from 19% in 2015 to 24% in 2017. The growth is even higher in areas such as Chicago and Dallas, which increased from 22% to 31% and 21% to 31% for the same time period respectively.

“In this purchase centric market, we anticipate a continued rise in more creative lending products to help increase Millennials’ access to credit and continue to counter concerns that rising interest rates will stifle volume,” Tyrrell said.

 

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Millennials undaunted by competitive housing market

FHFA: Home prices continue climbing in first quarter | Chappaqua Real Estate

Home prices rose during each month of the first quarter, continuing a climb that began in the early part of this decade, a new report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed.

The FHFA’s House Price Index for March, which is the most recent data available, showed that seasonally adjusted monthly index for March was up 0.6% from February.

Overall, house prices rose 1.4% during the first quarter of 2017, the FHFA report showed. On a year-over-year basis, house prices rose 6% from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017.

“The steep, multi-year rise in U.S. home prices continued in the first quarter,” FHFA Deputy Chief Economist Andrew Leventis said.

“Mortgage rates during the quarter remained slightly elevated relative to most of last year, but demand for homes remained very strong,” Leventis added. “With housing inventories still languishing at extremely low levels, the strong demand led to another exceptionally large quarterly price increase.”

Low inventory is also a concern of the National Association of Realtors, as its latest existing home sales report showed that home sales fell in April and homes flew off the market at a rate not seen since 2011.

The FHFA report also showed that home prices rose in 48 states and the District of Columbia between the first quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017.

FHFA monthly home price index March 2017

(Click the image to enlarge. Image courtesy of the FHFA.)

According to the FHFA report, the top five areas in annual appreciation were: District of Columbia at 13.9% Colorado at 10.7%; Idaho at 10.3%; Washington at 10.2%; and New Hampshire at 9.5%.

The FHFA report also showed that among the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., the annual price increase in Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Michigan was the highest in the nation, at 13.7%.

Prices were weakest in San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, California, where prices fell by 2.5%.

Of the nine census divisions, the Pacific division showed the strongest increase in the first quarter, with a 2% quarterly increase and a 7.7% increase since the first quarter of 2016, the FHFA report showed.

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FHFA: Home prices continue climbing in first quarter

NAR: Existing home sales will see best year since 2006 | Chappaqua Real Estate

Single-family existing home sales are set to see their best year since 2006, driven by robust job gains and improving household confidence, according to the forecast from the National Association of Realtors.

While existing home sales are increasing, low levels of supply and rising affordability concerns are creating headwinds for sales and threatening the low homeownership rate.

The first quarter came in with the best sales pace for existing homes in a decade; NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun expects that pace to continue, finishing off 2017 with 5.62 million sales, the best pace since 2006. This would represent an increase of 3.5% from 2016.

And home sales aren’t the only thing predicted to rise. NAR also forecasts an increase of 5% in existing home prices in 2017.

However, starter home shortage continue to plague the housing market and discourage would-be first time homebuyers.

“We have been under the 50-year average of single-family housing starts for 10 years now,” Yun said. “Limited lots, labor shortages, tight construction lending and higher lumber costs are impeding the building industry’s ability to produce more single-family homes.”

“There’s little doubt first-time buyer participation would improve and the homeownership rate would rise if there was simply more inventory,” he said.

Yun predicted new home starts will rise 8.4% to 1.27 million in 2017. While an increase from the current pace, this is still 1.5 million homes below the amount needed to make up for insufficient building in recent years. New home sales are also expected to rise 8.4% from last year to 620,000 sales.

Jonathan Spader, Joint Center for Housing Studies senior research associate at Harvard University, joined Yun at the 2017 Realtors Legislative Meetings and Trade Expo to discuss the 2017 forecast. He explained the homeownership rate will hover between 61% and 65.1% as it faces headwinds such as an aging population, changes in family type and increasing diversity by race and ethnicity.

“Stagnant household incomes, rising rental costs, student loan debt and limited supply have all contributed to slower purchasing activity,” Spader said. “When the homeownership rate stabilizes, there will be an increase in homeowner households. Young and minority households’ ability to reach the market will play a big role in how much the actual rate can rise in coming years.”

But while home sales continue to rise to decade highs, economic growth is at its slowest since World War II. Mark Calabria, chief economist and assistant to Vice President Mike Pence, explained at the conference the housing market cannot be strong without a solid economic foundation.

“A strong labor market will drive a strong housing market, but you can’t have a strong housing market without a strong economic foundation,” Calabria said. “The recovery has been uneven with roughly 70 counties making up roughly half of all job growth.”

And while the first quarter gross domestic product did come in at a disappointing 0.7% growth, the second quarter will see an increase to about 2.2%, Yun said.

Yun predicts two more rate hikes this year to bring mortgage rates to an average 4.3% by the end of 2017, and climbing towards 5% in 2018.

“There was a lot of uncertainty at the start of the year, but a very strong first quarter sets the stage for a modest sales increase compared to last year,” Yun said. “However, prices are still rising too fast in many areas and are outpacing incomes.”

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NAR: Existing home sales will see best year since 2006

The future of home ownership | Chappaqua Real Estate

Economists are hopeful that housing market activity — and prices — will continue to perk up generally in 2016, due to a number of factors. The most important catalyst for housing is the improving economy and employment landscape. As Americans feel more confident about the economy and more secure in their jobs, they will be more willing to take the big step of home ownership.

At the same time, despite the Fed’s first rate increase, mortgage rates remain low and banks are finally loosening credit conditions. Both of those factors are drawing more buyers into the market, further increasing housing demand.

One interesting group is the “boomerang buyers” — homeowners who lost their homes during the recession and are ready to jump back into the market. Some 7.3 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosures or short sales — two events that can stay on your credit report for up to seven years — from 2007 to 2014, according to real estate data company RealtyTrac. If they have no other major credit issues lingering, those first foreclosed owners are now coming out of the financial doghouse and qualify for a mortgage. RealtyTrac projects that 250,000 to 500,000 boomerang-ers will come back into the market this year, with another million or so more in the next few years.

One last group that could help boost the housing market is millennials, those aged 18 to 34. Sure, many of them are spooked by home ownership, because they watched their parents navigate the Great Recession and they themselves are graduating college with a hefty chunk of student loans. But young professionals may find that a fixed-rate mortgage is the perfect antidote to rising rents. And when they do come to that realization, the nation’s homeownership rate — which at 63.7% in the third quarter of 2015 was near multi-year lows — should reverse course.

 

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http://time.com/money/4193040/real-estate-housing-market/

Concrete repairs this winter | Chappaqua Real Estate

Site Accuflex Coatings ,

Concrete surfaces are constantly under attack by
the elements resulting in the need for repairs.
Accuflex Coatings

When I was in college I had a job doing maintenance in a downtown Denver hotel. I didn’t really know what I was doing but most things weren’t that hard to figure out. One time, though, I needed to repair a broken up concrete door threshold. I removed the old concrete and went down to the hardware store and bought a bag of premixed concrete. I added the amount of water the bag said to use (maybe just a little extra for good luck) and poured it in and troweled it off-another job well done!

But no! Two weeks later my boss called me into his office. Seems he had just gone past my repair work and found it as cracked up as the original threshold. I was so disappointed! We went back to the scene of the crime to do some actual investigation in advance of launching off on another repair attempt. While we were standing there, one of the kitchen workers came through with a heavy hard-wheeled dolly loaded with supplies that dropped onto the threshold as he passed: we knew the cause of the problem. For the next repair, we added reinforcing steel, used higher strength concrete, and eliminated the drop-off onto the threshold. When I left a year later, the new threshold was still working well.

I took away a good lesson-one that I soon found applied to just about any repair work. Before you can repair anything you have to know what caused the problem in the first place and you have to understand how it is supposed to work. Only then can you make an intelligent decision on how to do the repair.

Concrete Repair Information

With any concrete repair, take that lesson to heart and you’re off to a great start. First figure out what caused the damage, do the necessary preparation of removing any unsound concrete and contamination, then install a repair designed to solve the problem. The worst thing you can do is make a repair that doesn’t last. Someone once told me that over 50% of concrete repairs fail again within two years. That is not a track record that inspires confidence.

So let’s start by evaluating the problem and then we can decide how we are going to make a durable repair. This article is only a very superficial treatment of this subject. For more details, the best source is either the International Concrete Repair Institute or the American Concrete Institute. ICRI, in conjunction with ACI, publishes the Concrete Repair Manual which is over 2000 pages long.

 

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http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete-repair/

 

Housing starts fall 3% in August | Chappaqua Real Estate

Housing starts in the United States fell 3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,126,000 in August of 2015, following a downwardly revised 1,161,000 in July and missing market forecasts. Housing Starts in the United States averaged 1445.58 Thousand from 1959 until 2015, reaching an all time high of 2494 Thousand in January of 1972 and a record low of 478 Thousand in April of 2009. Housing Starts in the United States is reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

United States Housing Starts

 

ActualPreviousHighestLowestDatesUnitFrequency
1126.001204.002494.00478.001959 – 2015ThousandMonthly
Volume, SA
Housing Starts refer to the number of new residential construction projects that have begun during any particular month. Estimates of housing starts include units in structures being totally rebuilt on an existing foundation. This page provides the latest reported value for – United States Housing Starts – plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news. Content for – United States Housing Starts – was last refreshed on Thursday, September 17, 2015.
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http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts

New homes selling at slowest pace in seven months | Chappaqua Real Estate

Sales of new single-family homes dropped in June to the slowest pace in seven months, according to data released Friday that signaled a hiccup for the market.

The annual sales pace for new single-family homes in the U.S. fell 6.8% last month to 482,000, with drops in three of four regions, the U.S. Commerce Department. Only the Northeast saw the sales pace rise.

Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a June sales rate of 550,000, compared with an original May estimate of 546,000. On Friday the government revised May’s rate to 517,000.
While June’s result is disappointing, economists caution over reading too much into a single monthly report. A confidence interval of plus-or-minus 12.5% for June’s drop of 6.8% shows that the government isn’t sure whether the sales pace rose or fell last month.

Trends signal improvement, with June’s sales pace up 18.1% from a year earlier.

“Even the disappointing June reading still represents progress over a longer time horizon,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. “I view today’s reading for the typically volatile new home sales data as statistical noise.”

The median price of new homes fell to $281,800 in June, down 1.8% from a year earlier.

Recent new-home sales and building rates remain far below long-term averages. But a strong jobs market is expected to support rising home sales by helping more families afford ownership. Earlier this week, mortgage-finance giant Fannie Mae raised its 2015 expectations for U.S. home sales, upping its forecast for new and used homes. A mortgage-industry group also cranked up its forecast this week, raising its expectations for mortgage originations.

Elsewhere in the housing market, a recent report on existing homes, which make up the bulk of the residential-sales market, showed strong growth for June. However, economists warned about getting too excited over that flurry of activity, noting that some of the recent buying growth may reflect buyers rushing to lock in mortgage rates before they rise further.

 

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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-homes-selling-at-slowest-pace-in-seven-months-2015-07-24

Single-family housing starts down in June | Chappaqua Real Estate

Privately-owned housing starts in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,174,000, up 9.8% (±19.9%) above the revised May estimate of 1,069,000 and is 26.6% (±19.6%) above the June 2014 rate of 927,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Most of the gains in starts and permits were in multifamily, not single-family contruction.

But the problem is single-family housing starts in June were at a rate of 685,000, 0.9% (±11.5%) below the revised May figure of 691,000. The June rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 476,000.

“While the rise in housing starts was driven by an uptick in multifamily housing, there are positive signs looming for the single-family housing market,” said Bill Banfield, vice president at Quicken Loans. “Homebuilder confidence is at its highest level in almost a decade and the number of first-time homebuyers looking to enter the market is increasing – making programs like FHA even more vital to support continued growth.”

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,343,000. This is 7.4 % (±1.2%) above the revised May rate of 1,250,000 and is 30.0 % (±2.3%) above the June 2014 estimate of 1,033,000.

“Housing construction has nearly returned to pre-recessionary levels, as builders ramped up activity on multi-family projects including condos and co-ops,” saidStifel Chief Economist Lindsey Piegza. “While builders and lenders benefit regardless of the type of construction, the economic benefit, however, is significantly greater from single family construction as opposed to multi-family units, particularly rental properties; single family housing activity results in additional spending and borrowing power as a result of equity building which is not necessarily present in multi-family properties.

“The housing market continues to take steps in the right direction, however, growth remains far from robust; as we have seen in the recent decline in retail sales, consumers continue to struggle to afford purchases – particularly large ticket items – amid stagnant income growth,” she said. “Still, with the threat of rising rates on the near horizon, some homeowners are jumping in to lock in low rates. As we saw during the taper tantrum of 2013, despite a still-sluggish ability to finance a home purchase, many potential homeowners are willing to jump into the market sooner than later if it means avoiding a significantly higher mortgage rate.”

Single-family authorizations in June were at a rate of 687,000; this is 0.9 % (±1.1%) above the revised May figure of 681,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 621,000 in June.

 

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Single-family housing starts down in June