Where to Splurge, Where to Save in Your Remodel | Chappaqua Real Estate
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Tag Archives: Chappaqua Luxury Real Estate
‘Pay for what agents value, unless they’re wrong’ | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
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
6 Facebook Marketing Tips for Managing Your Facebook Page | Chappaqua Realtor
Wondering what works and what doesn’t for your Facebook page?
Or are you overwhelmed with all of the Facebook tactics you read about?
No matter how long you’ve had a Facebook page, it’s good to review some of the basics for creating a page for your business.
This article includes six simple tips that will make you a more effective admin and make your page more professional starting today.
#1: Check Your Wall-posting Preferences
Does your page get a lot of, ahem, critical commentary on its timeline? Or maybe just more than you have time to deal with easily? If so, it might be time to set your page’s Posting Ability tab so that only your page admins can post.
Here’s how: Choose Edit Page from your Admin panel. Then choose Edit Settings.
You can add/remove admins directly from the Admin panel.
From there, edit the Posting Ability tab and decide if you want everyone to be able to post on your page, or if you want to allow only your page admins to post.
While I normally advocate allowing open access to a page, and even leaving negative posts up so your customers and future customers can see how you deal with criticism, for some businesses it’s just simpler to let people message you privately if they have an issue. Setting to “Posts by Page Only” also prevents Facebook users from spamming you.
You’re able to choose to allow everyone to post to your page or limit posting.#2: Use Insights to Determine What’s Working for Your Page
There are two basic types of Facebook page admins: Those who post based on hunches as to what motivates engagement, and those who look at Facebook’s Insights to see what actually drives engagement.
Checking Facebook Insights will help you give your fans what they want. For example, if you notice that the posts with images have better reach and engagement than those that are text only, try removing the images to see what happens.
Since Facebook is always messing with EdgeRank, it can seem like just when you have figured out the formula for engagement, something changes. Checking Insights will help you stay on track, no matter what algorithmic changes Facebook throws your way.
A few months back, Facebook did a complete overhaul of Facebook Insights and Jon Loomer wrote a nice article for Social Media Examiner that walks you through the latest features.
Facebook Insights provide valuable information about the actions of your fans that can enhance your Facebook presence.#3: Assign Admin Roles
Facebook allows five different administrator roles: manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser and insights analyst. Each role has different capabilities—only managers have the ability to change each admin’s role. Facebook makes all admins managers by default.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tips-for-a-successful-facebook-page/
Mobile Advertising Projected to Increase 64% in 2014 | Chappaqua NY Realtor
As our web presence expands, so does the advertising space. Agencies are using mobile and native advertising to catch consumers’ attention on a variety of online platforms.
Companies nearly tripled the amount of money spent on mobile advertising, from $1.2 billion in 2012 to $3 billion in 2013, according to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Roughly 65% of both ad agencies and marketers plan to invest in native advertising, for an estimated total of $4.3 billion, in 2014.
See also: 10 Tips for Improving Your Mobile Advertising Campaign
Social and mobile marketing go hand-in-hand, since at least 17% of the time people spend on their mobile devices is on a social network. It’s no wonder then that analysts predict mobile and social advertising will increase 64% and 47%, respectively.
Marketers are expected to spend nearly $47.6 billion on online ads alone in 2014, with $13.1 billion of that figure allocated for mobile ads.
http://mashable.com/2014/01/03/native-mobile-advertising/?utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial
Celebrity Real Estate: LA’s 2013 Roundup | Chappaqua Real Estate
They buy. They sell. We look at the pretty pictures like the celebrity real estate snoops that we are. Somewhere deep inside us, we love the visceral thrill of trash-talking Mark Wahlberg’s master suite or thinking that Bruce Willis’ kitchen needs an update.
But at the end of the day, celebrities trying to buy or sell in the housing market are just like us — with maybe a few more layers of money, managers and financial advisers.
Here are some of our favorite celebrity properties listed, bought or otherwise appearing on the real estate Multiple Listing Service in Los Angeles during 2013.
Photos courtesy of Realtor.com.
Casey Kasem 
Radio personality Casey Kasem and his blonde, beehived Mrs. Jean listed in early spring what was uncharitably described as a teardown near Brentwood for $42 million. That wasn’t rocking anyone’s Top 40 list — despite the heart-shaped pool — and the price for the seven-bedroom mansion may have been out of whack with the times. The property came off the market, unsold, in September as concerns about Kasem’s health surfaced.
Bob Hope 
Bob Hope’s longtime Toluca Lake home remains listed at $27.5 million. While the address may not be as trendy as Beverly Hills, there’s a lot of house in this estate — almost 15,000 square feet of mansion sitting on more than five acres, just a proverbial spit from Universal Studios and City Walk. Not to mention a one-hole golf course and enough room for Richard Nixon’s helicopter to land so the two could play a few rounds.
Ellen DeGeneres & Portia DeRossi 
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi bought this Santa Barbara-area gem that was listed at $26.5 million in May. The restored Tuscan-style hacienda was built in the 1920s and was extensively renovated by its previous owner, architect and designer John Saladino. Landscaped with 30-foot Italian cypresses and mature olive trees for that Old World ambience, the property has a 10,500-square-foot home with five bedrooms and nine fireplaces.
2013 Real Estate Records | Priciest Sales 2013 – Chappaqua NY Homes
Real Estate Market Slows Significantly | Chappaqua Realtor
Come Have a Good Look at 2013’s Best Designer Dwellings | Chappaqua NY Real Estate
Photo by Eric Piasecki/Architectural Digest
This year shelter magazines tilled their terrain with many many a designer home—and why wouldn’t they? Parading the over-the-top digs of aesthetes whose entire lives drip with the glamour and point of view that made them gazillionaires is fascinating. More to the point, as much as any human’s habitat reflects his or her personal style, designers use their home to cloy the senses with their signature ballsiness—be it Ralph Lauren’s red, white, and blue tartan, Jonathan Adler’s pillows embroidered with with 1960s bouffant hairdos, or Orla Kiely’s groovy, ’70s inspired prints. These highlights (and so much more) below.
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Photos by Roger Davies/Architectural Digest↑ Waldo Fernandez in Beverly Hills. Fernandez, a prolific Cuban-born interior designer, not only boasts Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Aniston, Sean Connery, and the Pitt-Jolie clan as clients, but also a SoCal a midcentury spread lacquered to a high shine and laced with contemporary art. After replacing the pool and adding a second-story bedroom suite, Fernandez called upon what Arch Digest calls his “perfectionist disposition” for the interiors, bringing in wenge-wood flooring, large doors “finished in exactly 17 coats of deep brown–black lacquer,” and a collection of carefully curated art and furniture. “I’m obsessed with keeping the house fresh,” he told AD. [link]
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Photos by William Waldron/Architectural Digest↑ Jamie Drake in NYC. After spending years waiting for his two-bedroom unit in NYC’s Annabelle Selldorf-designed 200 Eleventh Avenue condo building to be finished—”it taunts me,” he said about the work-in-process in ’09—Drake, a big-name famed for his use of high-octane color, finally settled into his 3,000-square-foot apartment last year. Unsurprisingly, he took little time to swath it in the go-to garb—punches of bright hues, assertive art—that’s ensnared clients like Madonna and (outgoing) New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The home is also stuffed with pieces Drake designed, including the living room’s marble-and-granite table and his bed and headboard. [link]
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↑ Howard Slatkin in NYC. In October, interior designer Howard Slatkin, who’s made a living off a layered more-is-more approach to florals, chintz, gilding, tassels, and chair skirts, released a monster tome all about a single 6,000-square-foot New York City apartment: his. Frustrated by the penchant of shelter magazines to breeze over the private, and possibly the most interesting, areas of a home—the pantries, the linen closets, the crowded, computer-topped desks—Slatkin opened up every cranny of his pad: the elevator vestibule, the back hall, the laundry area, and, duh, the “flower room” and “candle room.” For any other apartment, an editorial dive this deep would be silly, but for an apartment overflowing with ivory objets, curtains made of “17th-century Portuguese polychrome embroidered bedcovers,” French Chantilly plates, and—oh my—mahogany doors “embellished with Japanese lacquer panels inset in gild-wood frames, which are bordered with patinated mirrors,” 240 pages is really the only way to go. [link]